The Next Best Thing (13 page)

If he was a rose breeder, he could make one up called Jane. It would have apricot buds opening up into creamy buff petals. How many times had he run through their conversation in his head. Jane
had said she dreamed of escape, and he imagined them leaving together, driving down to Dover in a Citroen 2CV, with nothing but a boot full of Austin roses and just the clothes they stood up in.
They would catch the ferry and drive slowly through France, avoiding the autoroutes, taking the minor roads, stopping for lunch to eat tripe à
la mode tie Caen
or horse casserole at
roadside cafés with plastic tablecloths and lace curtains. When they arrived at his house in Provence, they would plant the roses and then . . . And then his imagination ran out. He
didn’t know this woman, he had no idea who she was, and no idea why he was placing her at the centre of his fantasy. But he did know he would be seeing her tomorrow, and that fact was
exciting enough to make him almost lose his appetite.

Almost, but not quite. He filled out the order form for Beales nurseries and returned to the kitchen to prepare his supper. Setting out the smoked salmon on a plate with a garnish of rocket,
programming the microwave to heat the beef casserole. He took pleasure in his solitude: like a condemned man, he had the exquisite sense that each meal taken alone could he his last. The chair
opposite him was blissfully, silently empty. Tomorrow it would be occupied by Lydia, noisily updating him on the plans for their party, pulling out a few more brochures of wedding venues. He should
be glad at that thought, but he wasn’t.

Rupert knew he didn’t want to turn into a sad old bloke living alone, but the fact was he enjoyed his own company. There was a quiet satisfaction in finding your own space after a
gruelling day at the office. Padding from room to room in your old slippers without being upbraided for being an old slouch. Freed of the obligation to make small talk. But then again, it was time
he got married, otherwise people would start to think he was a bit of a pervert. If you got past forty without being married, everyone assumed there was something wrong with you. If you were a
woman, it was because you were a hard-nosed bitch concentrating on your career, but if you were a man it was because you were unnaturally close to your mother, or commitment-phobic, or gay, or all
three.

Maybe it was the power of thought, for as he was contemplating the need for marriage, the phone rang and it was Lydia.

‘Darling, I just had a thought, we must get our jabs done for the holiday. Can you meet at the hospital tomorrow lunchtime? You’re supposed to have it done three weeks before you go,
otherwise you’ll be done for by a tsetse fly the moment you arrive.’

Tomorrow lunchtime? Had she no idea how entirely impossible that was? It was on the tip of Rupert’s tongue to explain why, to tell her that tomorrow lunchtime was to be the high point of
his week, when he realised how out of order it would be. He was building his entire week around the chance of meeting a woman he barely knew, and he was about to share that with his fiancee.

‘Not tomorrow, Lyd,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a work lunch.’

It was the first time he’d ever lied to her, and it made him feel bad.

Lydia hung up on Rupert and sank back into the foaming water of her scroll-topped cast-iron bath. The bathroom was the best thing about her Balham flat. It was so Eighties
retro, she had laughed aloud when the estate agent had opened the door to show it to her. All fake Victoriana, gnarly gold taps, ruched blinds and dangling lavatory chain, with the bath tub
floating like a stately galleon in the middle of the room. It took up nearly half the flat and was the only part of it she would be sorry to leave behind.

She slipped her hips forward and let her head fall backwards, running her hands through her wet hair to rinse out the seaweed conditioner. The movement caused the water to slop over the edge of
the bath, drenching the carpet, but Lydia didn’t care. If her landlord had been stupid enough to cover the bathroom floor with a wool carpet, he only had himself to blame if it
disintegrated.

A pile of holiday brochures was lined up beside the phone on a bow-legged velvet stool that stood next to the bath tub. They were all for spa holidays, though Lydia didn’t use that word
any more. Last year it was OK to talk about going to a spa; this year you had to say you were going on a retreat. Not that the brochures had caught up with this yet, they weren’t nearly as
ahead of the game as Lydia was. She wiped the water from her eyes and picked up her current favourite, which claimed that regular spa visits were essential if you were to achieve balance of mind
and body. It implied that if you didn’t spend two grand on a trip to a luxury health farm in the Indian Ocean, you would fail to achieve this balance, and therefore presumably end up in a
mental hospital.

Personally, Lydia didn’t buy into all that nonsense about our lives being so stressful. Stress was when you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from. Stress was worrying
about not having the money to pay the rent. It sure as hell didn’t equate with overpaid people tossing up between a yogic Thai massage and a honey-and-sesame wrap. Where did it come from,
this idea that we were all so hard-done-by that we deserved narcissistic self-pampering? But still, in her business, she owed it to herself to look her best. She was planning to spend a week on a
retreat before the wedding, to make sure she looked truly fabulous. It wasn’t so much a de-stressing exercise as an act of self-congratulation. A little ‘well done me’ present, to
celebrate her success in pinning down lovely Rupert and his even lovelier — for she was nothing if not honest! — big fat fortune.

The choice had been narrowed down to two. She was torn between the Banyan Tree in the Maldives where you were pummelled in your own private tropical garden surrounded by high walls, and Ananda
in India where they went in for those Ayurvedic treatments inspired by the Hindu monkey god. Lydia loved all the eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Kabhaluh Judaism. So much sexier than
drab old Christianity, though perhaps that would become the next big thing: hair shirts and scrimping and saving and not coveting your neighbour’s wife and those appalling fish stickers all
over the family saloon.

She flicked from the Jacuzzi Ocean Villas of the Banyan Tree to the majestic turrets of Ananda. When she read that the Moorish palace was still home to a living maharajah, her mind was made up.
Even if the treatments were a load of quackery, everyone knew you couldn’t visit India without getting dysentery and losing half a stone, so any which way she would be the winner. She pulled
the plug and stood up in the bath, like Botticelli’s Venus in a giant shell, her auburn hair slapping wetly over her shoulder. The water pooled sluggishly round her calves. She should really
clear the drains, but then again it was hardly worth it, she’d be moving out soon.

She stepped out of the bath and wrapped a towel round her body, picking up her hairbrush and standing before the full-length oval mirror. Free-standing and tilting awkwardly on its axis, it took
up too much space, and made Lydia impatient for the sleek wet room she would be installing in Rupert’s apartment, which would be far more suitable for her home spa treatments. She frowned as
she brushed her hair and thought about one detail she had overlooked. Where were she and Rupert to live while the work was being carried out? It would have to be nearby, so she could supervise
things. She rather favoured the Sloane Court Hotel, just up the road. It would be nice to be waited on and she’d have enough on her plate what with work and the renovation. The last thing
she’d want to do was go home to a rented flat and fix Rupert’s dinner. No, the hotel was the answer, and she just hoped Rupert wasn’t going to be a tight-wad about it.

He was OK about money, though, she had to give him that. But she knew too many cases of girls marrying generous men who turned overnight into parsimonious old miseries. It was as if they were
programmed to spend to attract a mate, and then the moment the cat was in the bag it was zip tight and batten down the hatches. She threw the hairbrush down on the vanity unit, which boasted soppy
‘his ‘n’ hers’ floral-motif washbasins. The ‘his’ basin remained unused: Rupert had never spent the night in Balham, she didn’t want him growing to like
the area and suggesting they move there instead of Chelsea.

She slowly unwound the towel from her body and reached for the body lotion that cost £75 a bottle, but in her case had been a freebie from the magazine. Soon she wouldn’t have to
rely on handouts, she would be able to go to Harvey Nicks and just buy whatever she fancied. She didn’t love money for its own sake, she wouldn’t say she was greedy, but it did make
life so much more enjoyable. Knowing that she was marrying into the Beauval-Tench fortune meant she could relax, sit back and just enjoy the ride. You could hardly blame her for feeling pleased
with herself.

For this was what we had come to, wasn’t it? Religion was over, except insofar as it related to spa treatments. Guilt was finished: you no longer owed anyone anything, that was what
therapy taught us. All that remained was a long luxurious journey into self-discovery, and the more sumptuous the journey, the more richness and colour and five-star hotels you could cram in on the
way, the better you could say your life had been. And Lydia had every intention of making sure that hers would be a first-class Ananda-type experience.

In the foyer of the National Theatre, Jane sipped her gin and tonic and waited for Will. He was bringing a friend along for tonight’s performance, an arrogant hippy from
Wales who never washed. He came to stay once a year and Jane kept a special set of sheets for him that she laundered separately at a very high temperature.

She sat back to enjoy the sight of the middle classes at play, eating salad while listening to the pre-theatre jazz, band. Three young men were playing that vague kind of music that
doesn’t bother with a tune, the sort that people listened to in the early Sixties, tapping their Hush Puppies in a fug of Woodbine smoke. You could see people looking pleased to have signed
up for Tom Stoppard’s new play to then find they got a bit of free jazz thrown in. There is nothing the British public likes better than a bargain.

Five minutes to go and still no sign of them, though there was no shortage of middle-aged men. Glasses and grey hair everywhere, as you’d expect at a play dealing with Shelling, Kant and
Hegel. It wasn’t exactly rock and roll. But that was the beauty of the theatre, it made you feel like a bright young thing, unlike at the cinema where too many people were under thirty.
Exeept for the French Institute, where cinephiles came in all ages. She’d be there tomorrow. With or without her
Brief Encounter
hero. Only one more day to go.

She was just wondering whether to get herself another drink when she saw them coming towards her. Two old blokes with ponytails, she thought in a disloyal shock of recognition, before reassuring
herself. Will had an elegant air of success, while his college friend looked like the loser he was. He had several degrees and lived on the dole in North Wales, having turned his back on working in
favour of what he and Stendhal termed the tender sensations.

Will kissed her on both cheeks and Jane was glad that Phil made no attempt to greet her beyond a brief nod.

‘I’m looking forward to this, aren’t you, Phil?’ asked Jane, deciding she had better make an effort. ‘The reviews have been pretty good on the whole.’

Phil gave her a pitying smile. ‘I never read reviews, I prefer to make my own mind up. You can’t trust critics, no point expecting an honest opinion from people who are in the
pockets of newspaper proprietors.’

‘No, of course not,’ Jane said. ‘Horrible capitalists. Shall we go up?’

As the curtain went up, Jane was glad it was Stoppard and not Shakespeare. There was nothing worse than sitting through one of those so-called comedies and hearing the audience show off by
laughing at jokes that weren’t funny.
‘T’was not a . . . t’was a pricket’
Cue howls of phoney laughter. Any allusion to the horns of a cuckold and the house
would be rocking in their seats to prove they understood the significance of sixteenth-century humour. Stoppard was much safer, particularly a new play where few could claim to know the lines.

After the performance, they made their way slowly down the wide stairs as Phil and Will dissected the play in loud detail.

‘I’m surprised that Stoppard shows so little understanding of deconstruction,’ complained Phil, ‘considering he was arguably the first postmodernist.’

Jane dropped hack in the crowd and pretended she wasn’t with them.

‘I’m more staggered by his failure to treat Bakunin as a thinker,’ said Will. ‘It’s well-known that he could have been just as tyrannical as Marx.’

‘But surely you see that Stoppard is afraid of Bakunin?’

They stepped outside to face the rain driving in from the west, streaking the concrete façade of the theatre. After three decades of ridicule, concrete was back, but it still looked
rubbish in wet weather. Will and Phil went ahead, walking in step, ponytails nodding. They cut up the stairs to Waterloo Bridge and waited for Jane while they completed their critique.

‘Of course there are interesting parallels between Tsarist Russia and Blair’s Britain,’ Phil was saying, ‘but if you’re looking for brilliant absurdist fun with
bio-dramas, I’d stick with Lenin and Joyce in
Travesties.’

They stopped talking as Jane caught them up and Will hailed a taxi. They were going to The Ivy, which wasn’t wildly convenient for the South Bank but that wasn’t the point. Ordinary
people couldn’t get a table at The Ivy which was enough to ensure it was always fully hooked by those who could.

The taxi cut through Covent Garden up to Soho and Jane stared out of the window at the young people laughing on the streets, in groups and couples, all enjoying a night out. They looked so
carefree she felt like jumping out of the taxi right now and joining them.

At the restaurant, Will led the way in, nodding at one or two people he knew. Jane clocked Graham Norton on one table and wasn’t that Joan Collins over there? There was also a table of
dull-looking young men in suits, which brought into question the whole exclusive booking policy.