The Lemon Table (8 page)

Janice raised her own empty cup, and with a dull, unechoing chink, they toasted one another.

3

H
e’s the man to go to for knees. She was driving again in two days.”

“That’s quick,” said Merrill.

“I saw Steve the other day.”

“And?”

“Not good.”

“It’s heart, isn’t it?”

“And he’s far too overweight.”

“Never a good idea.”

“Do you think there’s a connection between the heart and the heart?”

Merrill gave a smiling shake of the head. She was such a funny little thing, Janice. You never knew which way she would jump. “I’m not with you there, Janice.”

“Oh, do you think you can get a heart attack from being in love?”

“I don’t know.” She gave it some thought. “I know something else you can get a heart attack from though.” Janice looked puzzled. “Nelson Rockefeller.”

“What’s he got to do with it?”

“That’s how he died.”

“What’s how he died?”

“They said he was working late on an art book. Well, I never believed that for a minute.” She waited until it was certain Janice had got the point.

“The things you know, Merrill.” And the things I know too.

“Yes, the things I know.”

Janice pushed her breakfast away to make room for her elbows. Half a bowl of granola and a round of toast. Two cups of tea. Liquids went through her so fast nowadays. She looked across at Merrill, at her beaky face and flat, unconvincing hair. She was a friend. And because she was a friend, Janice would protect her from what she knew about that awful husband of hers. It was just as well they had met only as widows; Bill would have loathed Tom.

Yes, she was a friend. And yet … Was it more that she was an ally? Like it had been back at the beginning. When you were a child, you thought you had friends, but in fact you only had allies—people on your side who would see you through until you were grown up. Then—in her case—they fell away, and there was being grown up, and Bill, and the children, and the children leaving, and Bill dying. And then? Then you needed allies again, people to see you through until the end. Allies who remembered Munich, who remembered the old films, which were still the best, even if you tried to like the new ones. Allies who helped you understand a tax form and open little pots of jam. Allies who worried just as much about money, even if you suspected that some of them had more of it than they let on.

“Did you hear,” Merrill said, “that Stanhope’s deposit has doubled?”

“No, what is it now?”

“A thousand a year. Up from five hundred.”

“Well, it’s certainly nice. But the rooms are very small.”

“They’re small everywhere.”

“And I shall need two bedrooms. I’ve got to have two bedrooms.”

“Everyone needs two bedrooms.”

“The rooms at Norton are big. And it’s downtown.”

“But the other people are boring, I’ve heard.”

“Me too.”

“I don’t like Wallingford.”

“I don’t like Wallingford either.”

“It may have to be Stanhope.”

“If they double the deposit like that you can’t be sure they won’t double the charges just after you move in.”

“They’ve got a good scheme where Steve is. They ask you to post a notice saying what you can do to help—like if you can drive someone to hospital or fix up a shelf or know about IRS forms.”

“That’s a good idea.”

“As long as it doesn’t make you too reliant on others.”

“That’s a bad idea.”

“I don’t like Wallingford.”

“I don’t like Wallingford.”

They looked at one another harmoniously.

“Waiter, would you divide this check?”

“Oh, we can divide it ourselves, Merrill.”

“But I had the egg.”

“Oh, stuff and nonsense.” Janice held out a ten-dollar bill. “Will that do it?”

“Well, it’s twelve if we’re sharing.”

Typical Merrill. Typical bloody Merrill. With the money the campus groper left her. A thousand dollars a year just to stay on the waiting list is small change to her.
And
she had the juice as well as the egg. But Janice merely unsnapped her purse, took out two dollar bills, and said, “Yes, we’re sharing.”

Hygiene

R
ight, that’s it, me boy.” His kitbag was stowed between the seats, his mackintosh folded beside him. Ticket, wallet, sponge bag, rubber johnnies, tasks list. Tasks bloody list. He held an eyes-front as the train pulled out. None of that soppy stuff for him: the lowered window, the waving hanky, the piping of the eye. Not that you could lower the window anymore, you just sat in these cattle trucks with other old fools on cheap tickets and stared out through sealed glass. And not that Pamela’d be there if he did look. She’d be in the car park grinding down the wheel-rims on the concrete kerb as she tried to manoeuvre the Astra closer to the token-slot thingy. She always complained that the men who designed the barriers didn’t realize that women had shorter arms than men. He said that was no excuse for playing argy-bargy with the kerb, if you couldn’t reach you should just get out, woman. Anyway, that’s where she’d be by now, torturing a tyre as her personal part in the battle of the sexes. And she was there already because she didn’t want to see him not looking at her from the train. And he was not looking at her from the train because she did insist on adding to his tasks bloody list at the last bloody moment.

Stilton from Paxton’s as per. Selection of cottons, needles, zips and buttons as per. Rubber rings for kilner jars as per. Elizabeth Arden loose powder as per. Fine as per. But each year there was something she remembered at D-Day minus thirty seconds, something designed to make him go poling across town on some wild goose chase. Find another glass to replace the one that got broken—read, the one that you, Major Jacko Jackson, retired, or rather formerly retired but currently enduring court martial by the NAAFI, broke in a deliberate and malicious fashion after going heavy on the gargling juice. Vain to point out that it was the sort of glass which had gone out of stock even before we bought it second-hand. This year it was, Go to the big John Lewis on Oxford Street and see if they sell the outside bit of the salad spinner which sustained a life-threatening crack when it got dropped by Mister Someone, because the inside still works all right and they might just sell the outside bowl separately. And there in the car park she’d been waving the business part of it at him so that he could take it with him and not buy the wrong size or whatever. Practically trying to force it into his kitbag. Aagh.

Still, she made good coffee, he’s always given her that. He set the flask on the table and unwrapped the foil package. Choccy biccies. Jacko’s choccy biccies. He still thought of them like that. Was this right or wrong? Were you as young as you felt, or as old as you looked? That was the great question nowadays, it seemed to him. Maybe the only one. He poured himself some coffee and munched a biscuit. The soft, familiar, grey-green English landscape calmed him, then cheered him. Sheep, cattle, trees blown into hairstyles. A loitering canal. Put that canal on a charge, Sarnt-Major. Yes
sah
.

He was rather pleased with this year’s postcard. A ceremonial sword in its scabbard. Subtle, that, he thought. Time was when he’d sent cards of field guns and famous Civil War battlefields. Well, he’d been younger then. Dear Babs, Dinner’s on the 17th inst. Keep the afternoon free. Yours ever, Jacko. Quite straightforward. Never did anything like put it in an envelope. Principles of Concealment, section 5b, para 12: the enemy is seldom likely to spot anything placed directly in front of its face. He didn’t even bother to go into Shrewsbury. Just bung the card in the village box.

Were you as young as you felt, or as old as you looked? The ticket collector, or inspector, or train manager or whatever they called them nowadays, hadn’t given him a glance. Just saw a senior citizen’s midweek excursion return and read him as a piece of no trouble, no interest, some cheapskate who brought his own coffee as a way of saving money. Well, that was true. The pension didn’t stretch as far as it had at first. He’d long ago given up his subscription to the club. Apart from the annual regimental dinner, he only needed to go up to town if his gnashers went wrong and he didn’t trust the local vet to fix them. Made far more sense to stay in a b-and-b near the station. If you had the full works for breakfast, managed to play your cards right and sneak an extra sausage, you were set up for the day. Same again on the Friday and that would get you through till you got home. Back to base. Reporting for duty, all salad spinners present and correct,
Ma’am
.

No, he wouldn’t think of that yet. This was his annual leave. His two days of furlough. He’d had his hair cut as per. Had the blazer cleaned as per. He was an orderly man, with orderly expectations and pleasures. Even if those pleasures were not as strong as they once had been. Different, let’s say. As you got older, your head for the sauce wasn’t what it used to be. You couldn’t tie one on like in the old days. So you drank less, enjoyed it more, and ended up just as newted and owly as before. Well, that was the principle. Didn’t always work, of course. And the same with Babs. How he remembered that first go-round, all those years ago. Surprising he did, given his condition at the time. And that was another thing, being newted and owly didn’t seem to make any difference to the honourable member then. Three times. You old dog, Jacko. Once to say hullo; once the real business; then once more for the road. Well, why else did they sell rubber johnnies in packets of three? A week’s supply for some chaps, no doubt, but when you’d been saving it up as he had …

True, he could no longer tie one on like he used to. And the honourable member wasn’t up to the three-card trick anymore. Once was probably quite enough if you had your senior citizen’s railcard. Wouldn’t do to strain the ticker. And the idea of Pamela having to face something like that … No, he had no intention of straining the ticker. The ceremonial sword in its scabbard, and just a half-bottle of champagne between the two of them. They used to get through a whole bottle in the old days. Three glasses each, one for each go-round. Now it was just a half—something on special offer from that Thresher’s near the station—and they often didn’t finish it. Babs got heartburn easily and he didn’t want to be too kiboshed for the regimental dinner. Mostly they talked. Sometimes they slept.

He didn’t blame Pamela. Some women just went off it after the change. Simple matter of biology, nobody’s fault. Just a question of female wiring. You set up a system, the system produces what it’s designed for—namely, sprog manufacture, witness Jennifer and Mike—and then shuts itself down. Old Mother Nature stops lubricating the parts. No surprise, given that Old Mother Nature is decidedly of the female persuasion. No one’s to blame. So he wasn’t to blame either. All he was doing was making sure
his
machinery was still in working order. Old Father Nature still lubricating the parts. A matter of hygiene, really.

Yes, that was right. He was straight with himself about it. No weasel words. Couldn’t exactly discuss it with Pam, but as long as you could look yourself full in the shaving mirror. He wondered if those chaps he’d sat opposite at the dinner a couple of years ago could do that. The way they’d talked. A lot of the old mess rules had gone, of course, or were just ignored, and those little turkey-cocks had been pretty much rat-faced by the start of the dinner and had started maligning the fair sex before the port was passed. He’d have put them on a charge himself. The regiment had taken on a few too many clever-dicks lately, in his opinion. So he’d had to listen to the three of them holding forth as if the wisdom of the ages was at their beck and call. “Marriage is a question of what you can get away with,” said the ringleader, and the others had nodded in agreement. This wasn’t what had stuck in his craw, however. It was when the fellow had gone on to explain—or, more exactly, boast—how he’d taken up again with an old girlfriend, someone from back before he’d met his wife. “Doesn’t count,” one of the other clever-dicks had replied. “Pre-existing adultery. Doesn’t count.” Jacko had taken his while to work that one out, and when he did he didn’t much like what he understood by it. Weasel words.

Had he been like that, back when he’d met Babs? No, he didn’t think so. He didn’t try and pretend things weren’t what they were. He didn’t say to himself, Oh it’s because I was all newted and owly at the time, and, Oh it’s because Pam is like she is nowadays. Nor did he say, Oh it’s because Babs is blonde and I’ve always gone for blondes which is odd because Pam’s a brunette unless of course it isn’t odd at all. Babs was a nice girl, she was there, she was blonde, and they’d rung the gong three times that night. There wasn’t more to it than that. Except that he’d remembered her. He’d remembered her, and the following year he’d found her again.

He spread his hand on the table before him. A hand-span plus an inch, that was the diameter of the salad spinner. Of course I’ll remember, he’d told her: you don’t think my hand’s going to shrink in the next twenty-four hours, do you? No, don’t put the guts in my kitbag, Pamela, I said I don’t want to cart them up to town. Perhaps he could see how late John Lewis stayed open tonight. Call them from the station, pole over there this evening instead of tomorrow. That would save time. Then in the morning he could do all his other errands. Precision thinking, Jacko.

The following year he couldn’t be sure Babs had remembered him, but even so she’d been pleased to see him. He’d brought a bottle of champagne on the off-chance, and that had somehow sealed things. He’d stayed the whole afternoon, told her about himself and they’d rung the gong three times again. He said he’d send her a postcard when he was up in town next, and that’s how it had got going. And now it was—what?—twenty-two, twenty-three years? He’d brought her flowers on their tenth anniversary, a potted plant on their twentieth. A poinsettia. The thought of her kept him going on those bleak mornings when he went out to feed the pullets and scrape away at the coal bunker. She was—what was that phrase they used nowadays?—his window of opportunity. She’d tried to end it once—go into retirement, she’d joked—but he hadn’t let her. He’d insisted, come close to making a scene. She’d given in, and stroked his face, and the next year when he’d sent his card he’d been scared fartless, but Babs had been as good as her word.