Our Tragic Universe (17 page)

Libby’s eyebrows almost hit her hairline. ‘Seriously? You have an open relationship? You’re fine with it and everything?’

‘Between you and me? When I first found out, I wanted to kill him. I’ve never been violent, but I used to have fantasies about all the different ways I could do it. Machete, chainsaw, toothpick. The toothpick was the best. It sounds improbable, but in the eyes, and the throat … And I used to cry in my van between jobs, thinking it was all over, and we’d get divorced, and I’d have to go speed-dating or something else that I wouldn’t understand.’ He smiled. ‘I gave it all a lot of thought. But then I realised that it was probably best not to say anything. I thought
that if she wanted to leave me, she would. But she obviously didn’t. And I suppose I do still love her. She’s very nice to me when we are together, and maybe I am a bit past it in some ways, so – this is going to sound awful – I sort of thought, why not let him do all the work, and provide all the romance? I’m not so good at that kind of thing; I know I’m not. So now I’ve got time to write my novel, and go camping, which she hates, and do my garden in peace. It’s worked out fine. I’ve realised you just have to consider these things from all angles before making a decision. Every Christmas we go to my parents and she and my mum cook dinner, and everyone gets on well. Every New Year I pretend to have a terrible headache and she goes out with him. He’s married too. It’s functional. It’s modern.’ He laughed. ‘My marriage is basically a piece of furniture. Probably too bulky to get rid of too. Probably nailed together at the back.’

‘And she knows you know?’

‘God, no. No, she just feels very guilty all the time. And so she …’

‘What?’

‘I’m a bit pissed. Sorry; I shouldn’t say anything else. You’ll think I’m …’

‘No, go on. Just say it. What? She feels so guilty that she gives you blow jobs whenever you want them? Runs you nice baths? Rubs your calloused feet?’ Libby looked down at the table. ‘God, I think I’m pissed too. Shit. Sorry, Bob.’

‘It’s Tim,’ he said, blushing. ‘And you’re right. Yeah. I’m a bastard.’

What was worse? Getting home first, or getting home second? If I was first, I’d wait for Christopher’s mood; if I was second, I’d walk into it. Christopher was one of those people – there are others, including my brother Toby and my father – who could fill an entire house with emotion. When Christopher was happy, everyone couldn’t help being happy too. But when he wasn’t, it was terrible. Sometimes there were signs: sawing, or heavy footsteps on the stairs, or sighing, or having the TV on too loud. But sometimes when all wasn’t well there was nothing except an emotional rumble, like the heavy throb of a diesel engine turning over and over right outside the window while you are trying to sleep, or think, or just be. Sometimes the rumbling and the throbbing became so intense that it was more like having a Chinook helicopter hovering over the house.

Once I said this to him, sort of, and he said, ‘How do you know it’s not you?’

He was right. I was a common factor. Maybe it was my throb, not his. After all, I had once apparently been able to fill houses with my emotions as well. Sometimes I wondered if everything that went wrong with Christopher and me was actually my fault.

The weekly rubbish collection was due the next morning, and as I walked back there were black bags outside most of the houses, and seagulls beginning to break them apart and
ack, ack,
ack
ing at one another in the rain. Seagulls in Dartmouth are fat. They have yellow beaks, red webbed feet, white heads and necks, black and white wing-tips and mean eyes. When they are not
ack, ack
ing they screech from the million-greyed sky,
you, you
, like the chorus in a tragedy. I had to keep pulling B away; she was fascinated with these big ugly creatures that weren’t at all interested in her. When I got to the bottom of Brown’s Hill
steps I saw Reg, back from the pub and now out in full waterproofs, putting his rubbish in the wooden box he had built to stop the seagulls getting to it. The steps were strewn with rubbish from other people’s bags that had already been split open. In Dartmouth there are three options with rubbish. You put it out five minutes before the bin men come, you put it in a wooden box with a locked lid, or you make sure you don’t throw away anything that you wouldn’t want your neighbours to see laid out in front of their houses. But there were new people in one of the cottages on Brown’s Hill, and in front of me I saw tampons, plastic cartons from ready meals, takeaway pizza boxes, empty dog food tins and a pair of old trainers with holes in both soles.

When I saw the dog food tins, which would have been recycled had they not been so dangerous to wash out, and the trainers, I realised that at least some of this rubbish was ours, and that Christopher, who wasn’t at all bothered about the embarrassment the seagulls could cause, had put the rubbish out too early again. I hoped he hadn’t seen the trainers. They were his, and they were revolting. I’d finally thrown them out because I couldn’t cope with the smell coming from the bedroom cupboard. He wouldn’t have thrown them out by himself. He never threw anything away. It struck me then that he would say the same about me, and I wondered whether we needed one another, even just to sub-edit each other’s existence.

‘Disgusting,’ Reg said, nodding at all the debris in the rain.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘Bloody seagulls.’

‘I’m going to exterminate them all,’ he said. ‘They’re the plague of this town. Rats with wings, that’s what they are.’

We’d had this conversation many times.

‘I suppose they’re just trying to live, like the rest of us,’ I said. ‘It can’t be easy being a seagull in winter. I mean, they annoy me too, but I understand why they’re doing it. They probably think we put the rubbish out specially for them as a treat.’

‘Pah! You young people. You’re too bloody understanding. You wait. You’ll see. These monsters need to be vanquished. They’re vermin. They’re pests. Everyone will thank me when they’re gone. Of course, the council should do it but they’ve spent all their money on that stupid maze in the park. Mrs Morgan up the hill says she’ll throw a big party to celebrate once I’ve got rid of them. You know one of them made off with her cat? Picked it up and carried it out to sea, just like that.’

I did know this. I wasn’t sure whether I believed it, though.

‘Well, good luck,’ I said, stepping over one of the trainers. I already knew I wouldn’t say anything to Christopher about the rubbish. As I climbed the remaining wet steps to the house I decided that once I got in I’d check my email. Maybe I would find that something amazing had happened to me. This wasn’t very likely; nothing amazing happened to me. Even if it had I wouldn’t know. Well, if it had anything to do with Orb Books I’d know. I couldn’t access my personal email account because I hadn’t paid the ISP for so long that, even though they were friends of Christopher’s from school, they’d cut me off months ago. Still, if I went straight up to my study, I could avoid a conversation about the rubbish, and if I distracted myself with new proposals and admin, then I wouldn’t think about Libby crying all the way back to her place, and I wouldn’t think about all these broken relationships, and everything would be OK.
Maybe Vi would have sent a message to my Orb Books account about the Newman book. Perhaps Claudia would have sent an email telling me how Vi had been trying to contact me for ages, and wanted me to know she’d forgiven me. Maybe there was some cocoa in the cupboard. I’d check my email, wait for Christopher to go to bed, and then I’d make cocoa and read the paper, and there’d be a world outside this one and everything would be OK. Perhaps I’d even finish the crossword and think about what knitting pattern I would get the next day.

As soon as I opened the door, it was clear that everything wasn’t OK. I could smell burning, and there was a plopping noise in the corridor.
Plop, plop, plop
. What was that?

‘Christopher?’

I put my umbrella to dry by the door, then hung my coat and bag over the banister. I took off B’s lead and she ran upstairs and sat by the bathroom, waiting to be dried with her towel. If I didn’t come she would knock her towel to the ground and roll around in it until she was dry. She hated being wet.

‘Sweets?’ Something watery fell on my neck. I looked down and realised I was standing in a puddle. The plopping sound was rainwater falling onto the floor in the corridor, soaking into the carpet. I went to the kitchen and found the pan we used least: an egg poacher that I’d bought after the only holiday we’d ever had. Now I was aware that Christopher was lying in a ball on the sofa, and that the air was throbbing with despair. I thought it would be most sensible to deal with the leak first.

‘What are you doing?’ he said, in a dead voice.

‘Just putting a pan down. This ceiling’s leaking again. It’s OK.’

‘How’s the adulteress of Dartmouth?’

‘Don’t call her that.’

‘Why not? It’s true. If you acted like her I’d kill you.’

As I put the pan on the floor I slipped and put my knee in the water. It was like kneeling on a cold sponge. ‘Fuck,’ I said.

‘What’s got you in a mood tonight?’ he said.

I stood up. I was wearing thick woolly tights under my jeans and so now I had two layers of wet material sticking to my skin. I’d have to get changed, but if I went upstairs now I’d probably be accused of storming off, which meant I was stuck with a wet leg.

‘Honestly, Christopher, I’m not going to have the “Who’s in a mood?” argument tonight. It’s obvious there’s something wrong with you, but I’m not prepared to spend an hour convincing you there’s nothing wrong with me before you’ll discuss it. I think I’m just going to get a glass of water and go upstairs and work for a while.’

He said nothing. As I walked into the kitchen again the burning smell got worse. The grill pan was out and two sausages, burned almost to charcoal, lay on it like the remains of a peat-bog person’s fingers. I took out a clean tea-towel and started dabbing my knee with it. If Christopher saw me doing this would he think I was making a big deal about the leak, and how he hadn’t put a pan down? Would it be seen as a hostile action? Suddenly I wanted to scream. This was all in my head. I had to stop thinking and just do what a normal person would do, without second-guessing everything all the time. I filled the kettle and put it on.

‘What’s happened here?’ I said, looking at the grill pan. ‘Christopher? Sorry I snapped. I’m a bit tired. Is everything all right?’

There was an open letter on the counter, which had obviously been screwed up and then flattened out again. A corner of it had sunk into a pool of water from where Christopher must have made coffee earlier. It was as if I’d been left clues: the kind of thing you’d get on a children’s game-show or activity holiday. So he’d made sausages at some point that evening, and then abandoned them. He hadn’t bothered to clean up after himself, which wasn’t like him. He’d ignored the leaking ceiling and curled up in a ball on the sofa. I picked up the letter and read it. It was another rejection, this time from Moor Trees. He’d had the interview two weeks ago, and hadn’t even been sure he wanted the job. He preferred walls and old buildings to trees, but most of the heritage places didn’t even offer him an interview.

‘Oh, sweets, I’m sorry,’ I said.

I walked over to the sofa and sat on the edge of it, and then put my hand on his back. Now I realised that he was quietly sobbing, his body bobbing up and down like a storm-shattered boat in a calming sea. He shrugged my hand off him, and I sighed again.

‘I’m a fucking failure,’ he said. ‘I might as well admit it. I can’t even cook sausages. I can’t even put a pan down under a leak. My father’s going to move in with a twenty-five-year-old waitress, my brother’s going nuts and my sister told me at Christmas that she “just doesn’t like me any more”. Everything’s shit. I can’t do anything without making a mess of it.’

‘No, that’s not true,’ I said. ‘Becca doesn’t mean it; she’s just trying to hurt you. She always used to get stressed and ratty at Christmas. Come on. Why don’t you sit up?’

‘I can’t. You don’t understand. Everything has stopped.’

‘OK, well, stay there then. Hey, maybe there’s something on TV.’

‘I don’t want to watch TV.’

‘I can go if you want to be on your own.’

‘Don’t go.’ He reached for my hand and clasped it. ‘Why do you put up with me?’

‘Sweets …’

‘I didn’t mean what I said before. I wouldn’t kill you. I wouldn’t even blame you. And I don’t hate Libby. Not really. Christ, my head hurts. I don’t think I can move.’

‘Do you want some painkillers?’

‘Yeah.’

‘And a cup of tea?’

‘Yeah.’ But he didn’t let go of my hand. ‘What’s happened, babe?’

‘Hmm?’

‘What’s happened to us? I don’t know if I’m even good for you any more. I fuck everything up. It’s even my fault that you reviewed the wrong book.’

‘I’ll make that tea.’

‘Meg?’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. I’m sorry. I’m sorry about the book.’

‘It’s all right. It wasn’t your fault. I’m sorry too. Look, I’ll be back in a moment. I’m just going to get changed, and then I’ll get you some tea.’