Starting Over (11 page)

She was lying on her side of the bed, with her back turned towards me, perfectly still. But I should have known. Her breathing didn’t have that soft little sigh in it that she always got when she was sleeping. And her body was too unmoving for sleep. When Lara was sleeping, that dancer’s body just seemed drained of all tension, loose-limbed in her rest, completely at peace.

‘Now she wants a party,’ she said without turning round. ‘For her sixteenth birthday.’

I sat on the bed and began pulling off my paint-spot jeans. ‘I know,’ I said. ‘She told me.’

A bitter little laugh. ‘Of course she did. I should have guessed you two would talk it over before approaching the old battleaxe.’

‘It’s not like that.’

‘It’s exactly like that.’

I thought about folding my new jeans, but it seemed a bit pointless. They were so riddled with holes and frayed with wear that it already seemed too late to be taking undue care of them. So I just chucked them on the floor.

‘And what did you tell her?’ I said.

She was quiet for a bit. ‘I’m not going to be the one who always says no. But there have to be some rules. You have to have some
rules
, George.’

‘Thanks,’ I said, ‘it will be fine.’

‘It’s hard to be the parent who always says no. It’s hard to be the one who always spoils the fun, who always urges caution, who always tries to keep their family out of the emergency ward and the police cells and the mortuary. But that’s the role that you seem to have forced upon me lately. I never wanted that role. You lot made me take it.’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘
Everybody
has their sixteenth birthday party without their parents in the house.
Everybody
does it.’

I smiled in the darkness. She did a very good impression of our daughter’s use of italics.

‘Everybody being a few spoilt brats in her class whose parents were happy to have them off their hands, and had always been happy to have them off their hands. I wonder why these people bother having children. They seem to spend their lives trying to escape them.’

I slid into bed and lay on my back. Between you and me, I felt like a cuddle – a really good cuddle, maybe two – but I knew this wasn’t the moment. Then Lara’s voice broke the silence.

‘What does it mean?’ she said. ‘The smudgy thing on your arm? Those upside-down squiggles?’

My fingers flew to the top of my arm. ‘My tattoo?’

‘Is that what it is? Your tattoo?’

‘Yes.’

‘What does it say?’

What does it say? What does my tattoo
say?
I didn’t understand how she could ask me a question like that.

It said
Lara.

What else would it say?

It was like a date.

We had decided that we were not going to lurk in the Rat and Trumpet for a few hours. We were not going to be the old folk who didn’t know what to do now that the youngsters didn’t need us around. Let them have their fun. Why not? Toss the rule book out the window. While Ruby was having her birthday party, we were going to have some fun of our own. Dinner, and dancing, and everything. Just like the old days. Just like a real date.

And when Lara came down the stairs, and I couldn’t stop looking at her, then it was even more like a date. And I knew that I had done one thing right in my life when I married this woman.

Guests were starting to arrive as we prepared to leave. Guests I had known for ten years, since they were little girls with no front teeth. That lost pink-and-purple world of childhood. Horses in high heels. It was not so many years ago.

Now they were almost grown but still young enough to
get excited about the chocolate fountain, and they were still young enough to look at Lara as though she had the key to some other, more glamorous world. They were so sweet to us – Mr and Mrs Bailey. Or perhaps they were just looking forward to getting shot of us.

There were a few boys – gentle, well-mannered lads with soft, self-deprecating ways. Boys who had longer hair than the girls. But the girls ruled in here. These self-confident, decent, not-quite-grown young women like Ruby. The product of good state schools and loving homes.

Music began to play in the living room. Lara smiled at me as girls started dancing together. The boys smiled self-consciously and lurked on the edge of the room, hiding behind their fringes, hoping they would not have to suffer the humiliation of dancing.

‘Let’s go,’ Lara said.

‘Wait,’ I said, and I stared at her because I wanted to remember how she looked at this moment, and to never forget it. And she could tell that I loved the way that she looked, and the old feelings were still there, and that looking at her made me happy.

‘What?’ she said.

‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘Everything.’

And I grinned at her like a different kind of boy to the gentle souls that Ruby had invited to her birthday party. I grinned like the kind of boy who knew he was going to get lucky tonight.

There was a mix-up with the restaurant booking. The table wasn’t ready when we arrived and a queue of would-be diners were double-parked at the bar. We were told that our table had slipped into the black hole of pre-theatre dining, and
that we should have a drink at the bar until it was ready. I looked at Lara.

‘Or we could just go dancing,’ I said.

When I met Lara, I needed to be drunk to dance. And I was one of those Englishmen who danced as though I was celebrating a goal. Arms above the head, not much movement of the feet. She got me over all that, she made me relax, and she gave me a few technical tips – like the one about opening your eyes. And she told me that there was more snobbery about dance than there is about art or wine or almost anything. She said people thought that dancing was for the young, or the cool, or the technically proficient.

And one of the things I always loved about Lara was that she thought dancing was about as elitist as breathing.

As midnight approached in the Africa Centre, I could tell by the smile on her face that she was impressed I still had all my old moves, as well as a few new moves that I was introducing into my repertoire.

Lara and her mates used to come here after work in the eighties. They would pretend to be peasants during the French revolution or prostitutes in Saigon or cats, and then they would come to the Africa Centre to dance the rest of the night away. So they would dance for their job, and then they would dance for fun. When we started going out, Lara took me to the Africa Centre and it was a bit of a struggle for me. Because I could see that, if I didn’t dance, then I wouldn’t stand a chance.

So I danced. And she helped me. And it became the most
fun I had ever had. And we had some great nights at the Africa Centre. They played funk and soul and African music. We saw Soul II Soul a few times when they were starting out.

But tonight was the best night.

Tonight was the best night of all.

When we came out of the Africa Centre it was raining and there were no cabs. I threw my jacket over Lara’s head and took her hand, and we headed east, out of Covent Garden and across the Charing Cross Road. The neighbourhood was strangely unchanged from twenty years ago. People were still falling out of clubs and drinking double espressos at one in the morning and necking in doorways. We strolled through the rainy night in Soho and twenty years fell away.

I thought that it wouldn’t take us so long to walk home, and that nearer to the park we might find a taxi heading back to the West End. We didn’t, but it hardly seemed to matter. We stopped under an old-fashioned gas lamp by Regent’s Park and I took Lara in my arms.

‘Someone will see us,’ she said.

‘We can do whatever we like,’ I said.

And then a miracle. A black cab with a yellow
for hire
light shining bright was coming out of the rain and I was in the middle of the street, waving it down.

We climbed in the back and our dripping bodies huddled together, wet and warm, the engine a soothing rumble as our mouths searched for each other and found each other and couldn’t get enough of each other.

Lara whispered in my ear, afraid the taxi driver was
listening, and then she said, ‘You don’t have to say it back,’ and the black cab played its diesel lullaby all the way to our home.

Or what was left of it.

Police lights.

Packs of people in the street.

And lights on in the windows all the way down our road. Neighbours watching the show, some of the braver ones in their doorways, but mostly peeping from behind their curtains. I paid the cab driver with a pounding in my head and then a beer bottle exploded between my shoes.

There were kids I had never seen before in our front garden. One of them was being sick into the recycling bin. The rest of them were arguing with a young policewoman, telling her about their human rights.

Our front door was hanging off its hinges. Someone had tried to kick it in. They had succeeded. I looked at Lara’s face and then I looked away. We went inside.

There was a girl I didn’t recognise sitting at the foot of the stairs with puddles of vomit on the knees of her embroidered jeans. There were crowds of people standing around as though they were in a club. Young and not so young. The average age had shot up. Some of them were ten, fifteen years older than the birthday girl.

A couple of cops I didn’t know held up their hands for calm as they were angrily lectured about their fascist behaviour. There was assorted music, all at top volume, coming from different corners of our unrecognisable home.

Lara began pushing through the mob, calling Ruby’s name.

I ran upstairs.

The landing was covered with random debris. It looked like the aftermath of a bomb. There was a single shoe. Scraps of clothing. A bloody handprint on the wall. A pair of furry pink handcuffs. And everywhere the crumpled cans and empty bottles, and everywhere it stank of cigarettes and wacky baccy, and everywhere the carpet was pockmarked with black burns and crumpled stubs.

I called her name.

I kept calling her name.

Condoms were scattered around like dead eels. I opened the door to Ruby’s bedroom. Two boys were asleep on her bed. There was blood on the walls. No, not blood – pizza. I moved on.

In Rufus’ room some guy about thirty was urinating in the wardrobe. As he turned round, zipping up his jeans, I hit him in the mouth with my elbow. He went down and stayed down.

Rufus was in our bedroom. He was death-white and sober, bending over his sister on the bed, stroking her hair. No, not his sister. One of her friends. One of those nice, well-brought-up girls who’d been so excited about the chocolate fountain. She seemed quite peaceful, but her face was streaked with make-up and tears. Bodies were collapsed all around the room. The smell of beer and puke and sweat and smoke was overwhelming.

‘She took a pill,’ Rufus said. ‘But apparently it didn’t work. So then she took another one. And then they both worked.’

‘Did you call an ambulance?’ I said. ‘Call an ambulance.’ I stepped up and felt for a pulse.

He placed a palm on the girl’s forehead. ‘She’s better now that she’s got it all out.’

‘Call an ambulance, Rufus. Where is she? Where’s your sister?’

‘It’s not her fault, Dad. Somebody posted something on the Internet. And some DJ started talking about it on his radio show. And then all these older guys, these guys in their twenties, they all heard about it. And this is what they do. They crash other people’s parties. Don’t blame Ruby.’

I looked at the girl on the bed. ‘I’m not going to blame her. I just need to know she’s all right. I just need to see her.’

‘Last time I saw her, she was in the garden shed.’

‘What’s she doing in the garden shed?’

‘She was hiding.’

Lara was waiting at the foot of the stairs. There was a policeman with her. From somewhere in our house came the sound of breaking glass, followed by cheers and laughter. My wife stared at me as I came down the stairs. She had found a terrible calm. Or perhaps she was just in shock.

Then there was the rumble of a black cab in the street, the one that had brought us home, and we went to the door.

As it pulled away we saw someone turn to look out of the back window, and the revolving blue lights illuminated our daughter’s face.

And then the cab reached the end of our street and she was gone.

‘It’s not her fault,’ I said, and I was about to blame the blabbermouth DJ and all these old guys in their twenties and careless chatter on the Internet, but Lara cut me off.

‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘It’s not her fault.’

And she didn’t look at me as if she didn’t know me. It was much worse than that.

Because my wife looked at me as if she was seeing me, really seeing me, for the very first time.

I stood outside the florist’s and moved my face close to the glass.

Among the tulips and the lilies there were flowers I could not name, flowers that looked like they came from another planet – extravagant blooms, orange and spiky, exactly like some exotic bird, and also delicate white blossoms on the end of thick green stems, as intricately carved as a French horn. But my eyes kept coming back to the roses. I knew I had to have the roses. She would love the roses.

There were a dozen of them in a simple bowl of green glass. They looked too perfect to be real. A lush deep red, they were, the colour of wine, the colour of blood. I went inside the shop, and a man in a green apron looked up at the sound of the bell.

‘Help you with anything?’ he said with a smile.

‘The roses in the window,’ I said, and his smile grew broader at my exquisite taste. He went to the window and fished them out, casually mentioning the price as we made our way to the till. Eighty pounds for a dozen roses? I fumbled in my pockets for every last grubby note and forgotten coin, placing them on the counter next to the roses, as we stood there with our smiles plastered on our faces like slowly peeling billboards. I was about seventy quid short. The roses were carted back to the window and I got out of there as quickly as I could, the bell dinging behind me, the man staring at me through the window, unsmiling and wiping his hands on his apron. I walked away with my face burning.

But there were more roses in the park. On a bed next to the playground, ringed by a low green fence. They were very much the poor relations of the roses in the shop. They lacked the deep, vivid hue of the shop roses. They looked a bit anaemic in comparison, these poor municipal roses; knackered and knocked about by the patrons of the park, two-legged and four-legged. Most of all they lacked the glorious uniformity of the shop roses. But it’s the thought that counts, I reflected to myself as I looked both ways to make sure nobody was around, and then climbed the little fence and started past the KEEP OFF – NO BALL GAMES sign.

I had just picked the dozen I needed when the park keeper spotted me, giving me a head start with his outraged cry of, ‘Oi!’ I could not run very fast with the roses clutched to my chest, but he only chased me to the park gates before he pulled up and stood there shaking his fist, like a sheriff watching an outlaw cross the Mexican border.

‘I know where you live!’ he shouted.

On the surface, the life of a dancer resembles the life of an actor. Dancers go to auditions, they grow up on a diet of rejection, and they have periods of intense activity followed by longer spells of unemployment. In reality, dancers are different. They never audition alone, they always audition in packs. Unless they are completely deluded, they do not harbour dreams of stardom. And once you get beyond the footlights, once you get backstage, you see that dancers are treated like respected manual workers, more like electricians and carpenters than stars.

Then there is the physical element. Dancers live totally in the physical world in a way that no actor ever does. Julia
Roberts will never have to end her career because she keeps tearing her hamstrings. Brad Pitt will never have to retire because he ruptures his anterior cruciate ligament. But that happens to dancers all the time. And that was what happened to Lara.

It’s strange how bad injuries happen. It can be the toll of the years, or it can be a single moment. You could be working up to it for years, or it could be an instant of bad luck. A stab of blinding, mind-numbing pain and suddenly you have a different life. That’s all it takes. An awkward landing, a fall, something suddenly tearing, and it changes everything.

This is what I learned from my life.

Some injuries you never get over.

Lara was sitting at the kitchen table, rubbing her leg, when I came in. There was a broom leaning against the table, a dustpan on the floor. She was massaging the area round her kneecap with her thumb, and digging her fingers into the back of her leg. Her face was white with pain. She didn’t look up.