“Oh aye, will do. Next week I reckon. I’ll check my diary back at the ranch.”
“Cool. Sure . . . like I said, no rush,” Andrew said, knowing that he’d spend the rest of the day refreshing his inbox until he was on the verge of a repetitive strain injury.
When the day of their dinner arrived the following week, Andrew found himself immediately anxious from the moment he got up. By the time he was at the office he’d managed to work himself up so much that at one point Meredith sneezed and he spontaneously apologized. He tried to tell himself to calm down, that it was ridiculous to be so anxious. It’s just dinner, for god’s sake! But it was no good. Peggy had spent the morning in an adjacent room that held the office safe, storing away the unclaimed items of value from a recent property visit in preparation for their sale, and had been on a training course away from the office in the afternoon. This, he decided, was probably why he felt so tense. Not being able to see her to exchange a friendly word all day, he couldn’t convince himself that she wouldn’t rather be doing anything else than spending her evening with him.
As if to confirm his gloom, he knew the restaurant was a poor choice by the look the waiter gave him on arrival, as if he were a stray dog who’d wandered in looking for a place to die.
“Your . . . friend is on their way, sir?” the waiter asked after Andrew had been sitting there for less than five minutes.
“Yes,” Andrew said. “I hope—I’m sure—she’ll be here soon.”
The waiter gave him a seen-it-all-before smirk and poured two inches of water into his glass. Twenty minutes went by, during which Andrew refused and then reluctantly accepted some incredibly hard bread.
“Are you sure you don’t want to order something now for when your friend arrives?” the waiter said.
“No,” Andrew said, annoyed at the waiter and annoyed at himself for having the temerity to get out of the little box he lived in.
Then, with the muscles in his toes tensed as he prepared to rise and make as dignified an exit as possible, he saw a flash of color at the door and there was Peggy in a bright red coat, hair sopping wet from rain. She plonked herself down in the chair opposite with a half-mumbled greeting and thrust a crust of bread into her mouth.
“Christ,” she said. “What’s this I’m eating—a hubcap?”
“I think it’s focaccia.”
Peggy grunted and, with some difficulty, swallowed.
“You know when you married Diane?” she said, ripping a bit of bread in two.
Andrew’s heart sank. Not this. Not this already.
“Mmm-hmm,” he said.
“Did you ever think that there’d be a point where you’d be staring at her as she sat on the living room floor with a beer can balanced on her belly like a drunk, horizontal Christ the Redeemer and think to yourself: How the hell have we ended up here?”
Andrew shifted awkwardly in his seat.
“Not word for word, no,” he said.
Peggy shook her head slowly, gazing into the middle distance. There was a lock of rain-damp hair hanging down at the side of her face. Andrew felt a strange urge to reach over and tuck it behind her ear. Was that something he’d seen in a film? The waiter appeared at the table, his smirk replaced by a slightly disappointed, almost apologetic smile now that Peggy had shown up.
“Would you like to look at the wine list, sir?”
“Yes please,” Andrew said.
“Don’t bother about asking me, mate,” Peggy muttered.
“I apologize, madam,” the waiter said, bowing theatrically before sauntering off.
“Annoys me, that,” Peggy said. “For all he knows I’m an off-duty sommelier. The wanker.”
On the one hand Andrew was enamored of Peggy’s righteous ire. On the other, he feared the chances of piss in their linguine had just been significantly increased.
After a glass of wine and the arrival of the starters, Peggy seemed to relax a little, but there was still an undercurrent of frustration and as a result conversation was hard going. Andrew began to panic in the increasingly long stretches where they weren’t talking. Being silent during meals was for married couples on holiday in brightly lit tavernas with only their mutual resentment of each other left in common. This wasn’t going according to plan at all. What he really needed was something to snap them out of it. His wish was granted, but perhaps not quite in the way he would have wanted, when a man in a yellow coat straining against his enormous form barged into the restaurant. His sleeves were stretched over his hands and he had his hood drawn tight over his head, the effect of which made it look like an incredibly large child was barreling toward them. As he stomped closer he yanked his hood away from his face, showering some nearby diners with raindrops. Heads were turning. The look on each face conveyed that very particular fear when someone is behaving outside the normal boundaries in a public space, namely: What is about to happen and am I going to be able to trample my way out first if it all kicks off?
“I could be wrong,” Andrew said, trying to sound calm, “but I think your husband’s just walked in.”
Peggy turned around and immediately got to her feet. Andrew folded his hands in his lap and stared at them, feeling pathetically scared in the face of the inevitable confrontation.
“So you’re following me now?” Peggy said, hands on hips. “How long have you been standing out there? And where are the girls?”
“With Emily from next door,” Steve said in a voice so low it sounded like he was in slow motion.
“Okay, and just to check, that isn’t just another lie?”
“Course not,” Steve growled. “And who the fuck’s this little shite?”
Andrew somewhat optimistically hoped it wasn’t him Steve was referring to.
“Never mind who he is,” Peggy said. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“I’m just nipping to the loo,” Andrew said with a manic brightness, as if this would make him impervious to being punched. The waiter stood aside to let him past, the smirk returned to his face.
When Andrew plucked up the courage to come back to the table, Peggy and Steve were nowhere to be seen, and Peggy’s coat was gone. Some of the other diners were risking covert looks up at him as he took his seat. Others were looking out of the window, where Andrew could now see Peggy and Steve. They were standing in the street outside, hoods up, both gesticulating furiously.
Andrew hovered by the table. He should go out there. He should at least pretend to himself, if not the rest of the restaurant and the snarky fucking waiter, that he was going to go out there. As he drummed his fingers on the back of his chair, still deciding what he was going to do, the yellow blob was suddenly gone, as if carried off downriver by a strong current, and Peggy was heading back inside. She looked like she’d been crying—it was hard to tell because of the rain—and mascara had snaked down her cheeks in two thin lines.
“Are you o—”
“I’m really sorry, but please can we just eat?” Peggy interrupted, her voice hoarse.
“Of course,” Andrew said, shoving some more shrapnel bread into his mouth and consoling himself with the fact he hadn’t been punched in the face by a giant Geordie.
* * *
—
Peggy went to eat the last mouthful on her plate, changed her mind, and set her knife and fork down together with a clang.
“I’m sorry you got called a shite back then,” she said.
“No need to apologize,” Andrew said, thinking that it should really be him apologizing, for being such a coward. “I’m guessing we’ll skip the puddings then?” he said.
The hint of a smile returned to Peggy’s face. “You’re joking, I hope. If there was ever a time for emergency sticky toffee, then it’s now.”
The waiter came over and cleared their plates.
“I don’t suppose sticky toffee pudding’s
on the menu?” Andrew said, with his best stab at a winning smile.
“As it happens, sir, it is,” the waiter said, seeming disappointed at this.
“Oh, champion,” Peggy said, offering the waiter a thumbs-up.
* * *
—
They both finished their puddings at the same time, returning their spoons to the bowl with simultaneous clinks.
“Snap,” Peggy said. “How much food have I got on my face, by the way?”
“None,” Andrew said. “How about me?”
“No more than usual.”
“Glad to hear it. Actually, you have got a little bit of . . .”
“What?”
“Mascara, I think.”
Peggy snatched up her spoon and looked at her reflection. “Ah Jesus, I look like a panda, you should have said something.”
“Sorry.”
She dabbed at her cheeks with her napkin.
“Do you mind me asking if everything’s okay?” Andrew said.
Peggy continued to dab. “I don’t,” she said. “But there’s not much to say, so . . .” She smoothed the napkin flat on the table. “This might be a bit weird, but can I ask you to do something?”
“Of course,” Andrew said.
“Okay, so close your eyes.”
“Um, sure,” Andrew said, thinking this was the sort of thing Sally used to make him do that would invariably end up with him being in pain.
“Can you picture a moment, right now, where you and Diane were at your happiest?” Peggy said.
Andrew felt the heat rising on his cheeks.
“Have you got something?”
After a moment, he nodded.
“Describe it to me.”
“How . . . how do you mean?”
“Well, when is it? Where are you? What can you see and feel?”
“Oh, okay.”
Andrew took a deep breath. The answer came to him not from something written on a spreadsheet, but from somewhere deep inside.
“We’re just out of university, starting our lives together in London. We’re in Brockwell Park. It’s the hottest day of the summer. The grass is really dry, practically charred.”
“Go on . . .”
“We’re sitting back to back. We realize we need a bottle opener for our beers. And Diane pushes her back against me to try and get to her feet. And she nearly falls, and we’re just giggling, and giddy in the heat. She walks up to these strangers—a couple—to borrow their lighter. She knows this trick where you can use one to open a bottle. She cracks the tops off and hands the lighter back. She’s walking back to me, and I can see her but I can still see the couple, too. They’re both looking at her. It’s like she’s left an impression on them in that moment that means they’ll be thinking about her for the rest of the day. And I realize how lucky I am, and how I never want this day to end.”
Andrew was startled. Both at the clarity of what he’d just pictured, and by the tears pooling fast under his eyelids. When he finally opened his eyes, Peggy was looking away. After a moment, he said, “Why did you want to know that?”
Peggy smiled sadly.
“Because when I try and do the same thing, I can’t seem to see anything. It’s that more than anything that’s making me think I can’t see a happy ending. The truth is I’ve given Steve an ultimatum: to clean up his act or that’s it. Trouble being, I don’t really know which way I want things to go. Ah well, I’m sure whatever happens will be for the best.”
Andrew was feeling a peculiar mixture of emotions. Anger at the big flapping daffodil, and pain at the sight of Peggy, her posture slumped slightly, her defiance undermined by her watering eyes. But there was something else there, too. It struck him that, up until now, he’d been too eager to find an excuse to get close to Peggy, that this had been far too much about him and the fear of where his life was heading. Part of him had wanted a reason to be able to step in and be there for her, which meant perhaps part of him hadn’t cared if she was upset. Well, if he was going to be that cynical and selfish, then he didn’t deserve a friend. And now, as he desperately searched for something reassuring to say to Peggy, he realized the pain he was feeling concealed a different truth. In that moment, he didn’t care about himself. All he wanted to do was make Peggy happy. The pain was there because he didn’t know how.
— CHAPTER 14 —
The following fortnight was dominated by death. The coroner seemed to be on the phone practically every hour, struggling to remember which cases she’d discussed with them. (“We talked about Terrence Decker, right? Newbury Road? Choked on a marshmallow? Oh, no, wait, that was someone else. Or possibly a dream I had.”)
Such was the glut of property inspections they were having to do, at times Andrew and Peggy regretfully sacrificed respectfulness for pragmatism, sorting through the chaos and the mess or the soulless, empty rooms as quickly as possible. The houses varied from a cramped maisonette complete with a dead rat sporting a grotesque grin on its face, to a seven-bedroom house backing out onto a park, its interior overwhelmed with cobwebs, every room feeling pregnant with secrets.
Peggy had been struggling even before the frequency of the inspections increased. Whether Steve had messed up again and she’d been forced to act on her ultimatum, Andrew wasn’t sure. The first time he’d seen her returning from the loos in the office with puffy red eyes he’d started to ask her if she was all right, but she very calmly interrupted and asked him a question about an upcoming job. From then on, every time he saw her looking upset or happened to hear her in the stairwell having an angry phone call, he made sure to make her a cup of tea, or e-mail something silly and distracting about Keith’s latest hygiene horror. He even attempted to bake some biscuits, but the end results had resembled something a child might use for snowman’s eyes, so he had abandoned them in favor of shop-bought. Somehow, it just didn’t seem enough.
During a brief respite in the break-out area one afternoon, eating what Peggy referred to as “alternative bananas” (a Twix and a KitKat Chunky, respectively), Andrew happened to mention Ella Fitzgerald.
“She that jazz one?” Peggy said through a mouthful of nougat.
“‘That jazz one’?” Andrew said. He was about to admonish Peggy for her description, but then an idea struck him. People still liked getting mix tapes, didn’t they? And what could be better than Ella to cheer someone up? If she could have the same effect on Peggy as she’d had on him over the years, it could even be a revelation, a cornerstone of comfort like it had been for him since he’d first listened to her all those years ago. And so began a series of agonizing evenings spent trying to choose songs that perfectly encapsulated Ella’s essence. He wanted to capture the whole spectrum—upbeat and downbeat numbers, polished and loose—but also just how joyously, infectiously funny she could be on her live albums. The outtakes and the between-song badinage meant as much to him as the most soaring melody.
After evening five, he began to wonder if it was actually an impossible task. There was never going to be the perfect tape. He’d just have to hope what he’d chosen would have the right sort of alchemy to make it a source of comfort to Peggy whenever she needed it. He decided to give himself one more night to finish it, eventually collapsing into bed way past midnight, his stomach rumbling angrily, at which point he realized he’d been so ensconced he’d forgotten to have any dinner.
When he presented the end result to Peggy on the stairs outside the office he affected an air of nonchalance to try to hide the nagging voice telling him this might have been a weird thing for him to have done. “By the way, I knocked up an Ella Fitzgerald mix tape for you. Just chose a few songs I thought you would like. No pressure, of course, to listen to it straightaway, or even over the next few days, or weeks, or whatever.”
“Ah, thanks, pet,” Peggy said. “I solemnly swear to listen to it within the next few days, o
r weeks, or whatever.” She turned the CD over and read the back. It had taken seven attempts for Andrew to write the tracks out in acceptably neat handwriting. He realized Peggy was looking at him with a twinkle in her eyes. “How long did it take for you to ‘knock this up,’ out of interest?” she said.
Andrew blew a dismissive and unintentionally wet raspberry. “Couple of hours, I suppose.”
Peggy opened her bag and dropped the CD inside.
“I’ve no doubt you’re an excellent mix-tape maker, Andrew Smith. But you’re a terrible liar.” And with that she walked calmly into the office. Andrew stood there for a moment, grinning, albeit slightly confused as to why it felt like Peggy had taken his stomach, heart and several other vital organs with her as she’d left.
* * *
—
There’s nothing like a PowerPoint presentation to stamp out green shoots of happiness, especially one involving sound and visual effects. Cameron was particularly pleased at getting letters to spiral onto the screen soundtracked by typewriter clacks, jauntily revealing that there had been an increase of 28 percent of elderly people describing themselves as feeling lonely and/or isolated. His pièce de résistance was an embedded YouTube clip of a midnineties sketch-show skit that bore no relevance to the presentation but was just, he explained, “a bit of fun.” They sat there in rigid silence, apart from Cameron, who chuckled away with increasing desperation. Just as it seemed the damn thing was finally about to end, an e-mail notification appeared in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen:
Mark Fellowes
Re: potential cutbacks
Cameron immediately scrabbled to close the window. But it was too late. The rest of the sketch played on, the studio audience’s laughter horribly at odds with the new atmosphere. Andrew couldn’t work out if anyone was going to say something. Clearly also anticipating this, Cameron shut down his laptop and made a swift exit, like someone who’s just given a short statement outside court escaping the paparazzi, ignoring Meredith, who’d started to ask him the obvious question of what that e-mail had been about.
How Not to Die Alone Page 14
