“Hey, now, I didn’t say you had to, did I? Some doctors will say visitors ought to keep to their hours, but luckily for you, you’re dealing with Daisy. What Daisy says, goes. And Daisy says that if you want to stay, then that can be sorted. I can get you some bedding before I head home, if you’d like?”
She rubs her eyes with the edge of her wrist where her rubber glove ends. When she opens them again, they seem larger, discs of dusty blue awaiting my answer.
“Will you, please?”
“Sure, Frank. But mind, there’s no glamour here, I warn you. Think camping, then think less comfortable. Saves you going home, though. Saves you time. Unless you need to get back for something?”
Time. Yes. The eternal enemy. How long do I have left? Before they try to pull the cord on Maggie? For “compassion.” For budgets. For everyone’s sanity. The thought sends fresh waves of nausea crashing through me, and I try to suppress the image of a doctor’s hand wavering at the plug socket behind the bed.
Daisy has finished her adjustments, and for a second we hold each other’s gaze. I am the first to look away. There is something confessional about her presence, and this is a confession I am not yet ready to make, however big my first step has been. Not yet. Eventually. I’ll get there eventually. I hope I have enough time.
When Daisy excuses herself to locate a camp bed, I move a little closer to Maggie. In doing so, my stomach drops a fraction, its age-old response to nerves. I have spent a lifetime trying to get closer to her. Now I am too scared.
“Do you still recognize this voice?” I ask, running my finger down the soft skin of Maggie’s cheek. When it reaches her jaw, I can see my finger tremble. “Do you still want to hear it anyway? Please, Mags, just wake up and tell me it isn’t too late.”
In an unbelievable stroke of good fortune, you agreed to a second date. My nerves skyrocketed. There was so much more at stake. I wonder if you noticed my palms sweating, Mags, when I stood up to greet you. That awful moment when you went in for a double-cheek kiss—so sophisticated, so natural—and I stuck my hand out instead, like I was being interviewed for a job, not trying to start a relationship.
We met down a narrow alleyway. Do you remember it? The one near to where Edie moved a couple of years later. Anyway, it hardly screamed safe, let alone romantic. Earlier in the week, I had put instructions on a notelet and left it with reception at the surgery, half fretting whether my missive would make it to you, half terrified you wouldn’t turn up after you read it. As I would come to learn, you lived for that thrill of the unexpected. You would bring it out in me too. I always did say you were a miracle worker.
“So?” you ask.
“So, what?”
“So, what are we doing today?” You look so excited.
“I thought we might do a little boating.” I try out the voice I have been practicing in the shower this week. Confident. Assertive. One that suits the new Frank. If I’m honest, it is the sort of Frank I didn’t even know could exist.
“Ooh, I’d love that!”
Just as I am about to mentally toast my own victory—Two for two! Can I make it three?—there is an ominous rumble in the clouds above. We both look up at the gray overhead, only one or two white curls visible in a sea of slate. I look down before you and see that there is a smile hovering on your lips.
“They did say on the radio that it was going to be mild. The beginning of spring . . . ,” I begin. It is late February. We are both bundled up in coats and scarves. I wish I hadn’t been so trusting of the peppy weather presenter. “But now I’m wondering if perhaps this isn’t quite the weather for it . . .”
“Or maybe it’s the best weather for it after all?” You fix me with a look that is blatant in its mischief. “You’ve got me this far—there’s no way we’re not getting in a boat now.”
My heart thumps so loudly in relief that I wonder if you can hear it.
“Right, well, shall we?”
Logistically, things go from bad to worse. The boat I have rented, from a “close friend” of Piotr’s (not a phrase I would ever trust again), has a crack running horizontally under one seat and a set of the shortest oars I have ever seen. In a fit of gallantry, I take the seat above the crack and offer to do the rowing. You push us off, taking a run-up that sends me shooting off from the bank far faster than either of us expected. To get on board, you end up half splashing into the river and have to hoick yourself up with a violent push that sends the whole boat rocking from side to side. By the time you are in, we are both in hysterics.
You barely pause for breath before you are pulling off your loafers and emptying out the greenish-brown water that is sloshing around the soles. You stand up and immediately begin pulling down your tights. The first patch of skin that emerges, mid-thigh, is peppered with goose pimples. I feel indecent for looking and end up manically checking over my shoulders instead, as if on the lookout for the bank. Too late. We hit it with a judder that sends you flying forward. Just in time, I manage to catch you. My hands grab your shoulders inches before you crash into my face. I avoid a bruise, but the intimacy shakes me.
“My hero.” There is something playful in your tone that makes me stir. I imagine what would have happened if I had let you fall just that tiny bit farther, until our bodies touched . . . Then, in desperation, I think of my grandmother, down in Dorset, and the way she would pick the food out of her teeth with her nails after supper, collecting the larger bits on the side of her plate. I think of the black mold on the shower door, the blocked sink in the little side kitchen at work . . . anything to distract me from the tightness in my trousers.
Before I know it, you have sat back down again, opposite me. The moment has passed, and my breath returns to some semblance of normality. In all the excitement, the boat has continued on its own path downstream, and when I finally take up the oars, I realize the hard work may have been done for me. We are in a small inlet, the surface almost emerald with a series of large, overlapping lily pads. The boat has a hard time cutting through them, but for once, now that I am in your presence, I feel no need to be chopping and changing lanes to get on in life just that bit faster.
On the far bank, two mallards, a male and a female, make their haphazard procession out of the water.
“Would you like a family, Frank?”
Do you know, I had never thought about that until you asked? I felt it was out of my reach to find someone to share a night with, let alone enough days for that to be a question on the cards.
You were the first woman I’d ever felt this way about. My first love, a decade later than everyone else seemed to experience theirs. I’d spent the last few years seeing all my friends coupling off while I languished on the starting blocks. I’d had enough trouble finding the right person, without the issue of the right time coming into play too.
I often found myself wondering why I hadn’t met anyone before. Since Fiona, I’d had trouble getting up the confidence to ask anyone out, but even on the rare occasions when I did, I never seemed to have any success. At the pub, I could laugh it off, but once I was home, curled up in the single bed in my room (a good two inches too small for me, but beggars can’t be choosers), I ran through what had gone wrong. I wondered if my potential love interests had noticed the tremor in my voice when I asked? That off-putting quiver that suggested I wasn’t a leader or a man’s man or whatever else they might have wanted. Did I not lay enough groundwork? After a few failed attempts, I drew my conclusion: I was kind, reliable Frank. The friend. I didn’t have the self-confidence, the pizzazz, to be the great love of anyone’s life. Until you, Maggie. You magicked something new out of me, all right.
Your question hangs in the air.
“I’m not sure. Perhaps. Yes, I suppose. I’m sorry, that’s not a very good answer, is it? Anyway, what about you?”
“Yes, yes. Very much so.” You answer without so much as a pause for breath.
“Are you close to your own family?” I ask, running my right hand through t
he water. I watch as it cuts the surface like a blade and then glance up at you.
“Not really. My dad died, two years back . . .”
“I’m sorr—”
You cut me off, almost as if you didn’t notice the apology at all. “It’s fine. Now it is, at least. We weren’t very close, but well, it’s still sad, isn’t it?”
For the first time since we met, I see a new side to you. Gone is the gregarious, good-time girl, the joker, and the raconteur. You are contemplative and wistful. You are struggling to meet my eyes, and I sense there is something darker afoot too. You fiddle with the sleeve of your cardigan, twisting the loose fabric against your wrist before hooking it over your thumb like a tiny cotton cap.
“What about brothers and sisters?”
“Two brothers, both older. One’s in New York. The other’s . . . I’m not sure, actually. He’s an artist. Last I heard he was in Scotland for an exhibition.”
“And your mum, is she . . . ?”
“Alive? Yes. Just not very present. She left when I was thirteen. Remarried.” There is something in your tone that is more than matter-of-fact. What is it? Resignation? Despair?
“Do you see her much?”
“Every now and again. She lives abroad, moves around a lot with her new husband. It’s all . . .” You make a gesture with your hands, circling them and then opening the palms up to the sky as if to say it is out of your control.
“Complicated?” I suggest.
“And difficult. But that’s family, huh?”
Just as that familiar worry is settling at the base of my stomach—What will I say next?—I feel a cool rush on my forearm. A frog has temporarily mistaken me for a lily pad. Slowly, so as not to startle it, I bring my left hand over and, in one deft motion, close my hand over its body. There is a second of panic when its eyes bulge, but then, safe in my cupped hands, it settles.
“What on earth?” Your attention snaps back to the boat.
“Oh, this guy? Just a friend.”
“You are very good with him, Frank.”
“Cheers. A compliment at last.” Teasing you comes easily, but I am still keen to tread carefully. “I work with frogs.”
“Really?” Your incredulity is almost as wide-eyed as the amphibian chirruping in my hands.
“They’re great. Honest. To look at how far we have evolved. At the moment, we’re looking at something called ‘genetic drift’; that’s the part of evolution that produces random changes over time. So, not selection, not what Darwin says. But at least it gives a chance to those of us who wouldn’t make the cut in the survival of the fittest.”
“Helpful for me too, then.” There is a little color in your cheeks, a pinprick of red that is spreading out wider and wider. I didn’t know you had the same bashfulness as me. What else had I read wrong?
“We all have silent genes—well, that’s the current theory. Little bits of us that we can’t see, not obviously, at least, which can cause mutations—good and bad.”
“I like that.” Your voice is barely above a whisper. “The little things that no one sees that could make the biggest change of all.”
I reach over to you and begin to trace my finger in a circle over the goose pimples on your knee as if they were Braille. What silent secrets will I find there?
Just as my confidence is increasing, the tremor in my hand quietening, there is a rumble in the skies above.
“Shit,” I say as I fumble for the oars. “Better get back.”
Luckily, we haven’t gone far. It is only as I am heaving our dinghy out and draining it under the boathouse awning that the rain starts. You don’t rush for cover, not like me. No, you don’t move an inch. You throw your coat at me and continue to stand in the full spray of the downpour, your arms above your head as you let the drops, fat and heavy, course down you.
“Maggie, you are a madwoman—you must be freezing!” I shout.
“Yes, just a bit.” It is as if the thought of the cold has only just occurred to you. You head toward me, and I rush over with the coat outstretched.
“We need to get you home, before you get a chill.” There is a fumble as you struggle to wriggle your arms into your coat sleeves, which I have straightened.
“Whose home?”
I have a distinct sense of being tested. I know what I want to do, but I am wary of pressuring you. I’m scared I will lose you altogether. Besides, I am a lodger, and the sort of hospitality I would like to share is hardly appropriate for a family home with two children under ten.
“What about mine?” you offer.
Silence.
“Jules and Edie will be in, but they’ll keep themselves to themselves, I’m sure, and I’ve some food that needs eating.” You are remarkably perky for a woman whose teeth are chattering.
“Yes.” You appear not to have heard as you begin a full inventory of your cupboards and our supper options. “Yes, I’d like that,” I say, a little louder than I had hoped this time, and rather too loud for the empty river path we are on.
“Oh, well, great then—grab your bike!”
I learn then that you are a demon on two wheels, powering down the cobbled lanes and main roads that lead back to your shared house with the sort of vigor I had previously assumed you reserved for conversation. So much for a romantic cycle, side by side: I play a ten-minute round of quite literally chasing your coattails before you squelch off the saddle and brandish your keys.
“Home sweet home!”
It takes me a good minute to catch my breath.
The house is much as I have imagined, small and made smaller by an assortment of clutter strewn on every surface: the teapot acts as an unofficial paperweight, holding down a stack of bills, more than one of which bears a red overdue stamp; a shelf of LPs has overbalanced, leaving a puddle of discs and covers surrounding the record player below; half the crockery appears to be either lodged on the sofa’s edge or wedged behind it. Everything is a little too much, notably disorderly.
There was no doubt you lived there, Mags, although it was amusing to hear you’d only moved in three months ago. It never did take long for you to make an impression.
In a change to the billed proceedings, Jules and Edie do little to make themselves scarce. I learn a lot then. About the nursing course the three of you met on in London, the digs you shared near Tooting Common, and just how close you had come to being suspended after an incident involving a skeleton, three meters of bandages, and a particularly debauched Halloween party in Balham. I don’t need to worry about impressing with my conversation over dinner: there is no way I can get a word in edgeways in the hours that follow.
“Race you for the bathroom?” Jules turns to Edie, whose fourth hot toddy of the evening has left her yawning uncontrollably.
“Outta my way!” Edie hollers, pushing her chair back with such force as she lurches off the starting block that it careers backward, landing with a thump on the floor.
“Not fair, no way!” Jules is up, after her, the two shrieking and cursing all the way up the stairs.
“Is it any wonder we aren’t our landlord’s favorites?”
It is just us, finally.
I have spent the past few hours navigating the space between us in a state of constant anxiety. Now we are the closest we have ever been, our chairs adjacent at the square dining-room table, our knees brushing. I know now is my opportunity to kiss you, properly. I can feel myself shaking.
I inch my face forward and am relieved to see you do likewise. In anticipation, I reposition my hand on the table to steady myself but unwittingly place it on a slick of spilled gravy. My upper body hurtles far too fast toward you, and my forehead bashes into yours. You laugh, kindly. I wipe my hand on my trousers and set it back next to my glass. You reach over, and your skin on mine feels reassuringly cool as I start burning up with shame. I wait a beat or two, for my cheeks to go down, for my stomach to dislodge from my throat.
“Will you stay tonight, Frank?”
There
is nothing I want more and nothing I am more scared of.
“I’d like that,” I manage. “Shall I . . . ?” I gesture at the mess you and Jules managed to make in the preparation of the sausages and mash.
“Oh, all this? No, no, leave it for me, tomorrow.”
We both know you are being optimistic there. As if in protest, the tower of pots, pans, and miscellaneous crockery gives a tinny groan. You rush to the sink and create some makeshift scaffolding with your arms. I manage to move some of the dishes into the sink, both of us doubled over with laughter. Just as I am going to turn on the taps, you place your hand on mine and draw it away, intertwining our fingers.
In the doorway, you turn off the kitchen light and lead me up the stairs. You don’t turn on the light in your room either. I find the bed and sit on the edge of it. For a second you let go of my hand—have I done something wrong already? But then you are back, slippers off, and so much better than I could have hoped for, your knees straddling my lap, your upper body curved to reach my lips.
Looking back, I am grateful you didn’t give me the time to begin down the inevitable path to overthinking: Would you assume there had been others? Would my inexperience be noticeable? Would it put you off?
No, none of that. Just you, me, and our bodies, giving ourselves up to each other with the overwhelming sense that whatever detours the day might have taken, we had ended up in the right place, with the right person, after all.
I remember our first time like it was yesterday, Mags. I couldn’t believe how soft your skin felt, how perfectly we seemed to fit together. I hadn’t dared to hope things could get even better, that there was more to come. You always did prove me wrong.
When we finish, a little abruptly on my part, you will have none of my whispered apology, placing your index finger across my lips in a stylized shush. With your head nestling in the hollow below my left shoulder and arm, I wish I had told you that you made me the happiest man alive.
“Thank you,” I whisper.
Chapter 5
I doubt it happened that first time, although I may be wrong. There were a few times in short succession, blissful nights at yours and the hurried mornings after as you set an alarm ambitiously close to the surgery’s opening hour. You had to drag me out of bed by the ankles, still half asleep and with my hands slammed against my ears to drown out the noise. I looked like a scarecrow as you flapped me out of the house—no time for a shower, let alone breakfast, and my hair sticking up every which way. You, by contrast, managed to look as impeccable as ever.
The Silent Treatment Page 4
