The Consequence of Love

by Sandra Howard

  ‘Don’t. Don’t say that, don’t make me think about it.’ Her head was against his shoulder and she sat up and stared miserably into his eyes.

  ‘But it’s the case,’ he said. ‘It’s a fact you have to face. How’s our time? I can drop you somewhere close to home, which gives us a bit longer.’

  Nattie felt nervous about that, but she wanted every minute going. ‘I shouldn’t really chance it.’

  Ahmed kissed her lips. His bare feet were up on the coffee table, ankles crossed. She loved his neat toes, legs with the right amount of hair, his sinewy body, the aura of energy that lifted off it like a shimmer of summer heat; she loved the male scent of his skin. Her stomach curdled with longing and the acid truths of being married to another man.

  ‘So I shacked up with ARC again, helped out there, and set about making a few bob from scribbling. I’d made useful contacts and ensured that anything I fed the press was professional and snappy, reporter-on-the-Post style – which I could do falling off a kayak – and a provincial newspaper ran a few pieces. One of the nationals took an article on living in the wild and I ended up doing a weekly column bylined The Forest Walker. I’d done quite a bit of that!

  ‘It was good pocket money. I could buy clothes and repay Jeff with a few drinks. I wrote a couple of short stories for magazines, sent a piece on the plight of First Nation Canadians to the New Yorker, calling myself I.D. Newel – which felt vaguely appropriate, my third identity – and they ran it. I’d got myself better set up.’

  ‘I’m panicking a bit, we’ve got to go,’ Nattie said, swinging her legs down. Ahmed stood up. He lifted her into his arms, carried her to the foot of the stairs. ‘Can’t make it any further – and anyway, we’re in a rush!’

  They dressed at speed and were racing out of the bedroom when Nattie noticed Ahmed’s two bags. It was a prompt. ‘You still haven’t let on what you’re doing now,’ she complained. ‘Obviously quite a lot, it would seem, from those Business Class labels on your luggage.’

  ‘I’ll give you the gist in the car,’ Ahmed said, smiling.

  Downstairs they clung hard and left. Nattie gave an involuntary shiver as the front door clicked closed behind them. They held hands as far as the gate, on the paved path through the scented front-garden shrubs. Ahmed had taken charge of her book bag, along with a carrier bag he’d picked up that was by the front door.

  He did an efficient three-point turn in the road, talking all the while. ‘I’d had an idea for a television series and mentioned it to an old boy I’d been stuck with at a do that my new friend, Jeff, had taken me to – a lunch part y at his chairman’s house, all very lavish. The old boy, an astute businessman, in fact, who knew half Vancouver, had seemed interested and given me his card, saying he had friends in the film business and to call up if I ever had a finished script. As I said before, Hollywood makes loads of its films in Canada, especially around Vancouver; I knew that. It short-circuits American union problems and saves them a packet.

  ‘I’d worked on my idea after that, fitting it in between articles and helping out at ARC. It was hard graft and I didn’t hold out much hope, but I still dug out the businessman’s card and called him up on the off-chance.’

  ‘And something came of it?’’

  ‘Yes. Amazingly. He asked me to a drinks party. Someone was coming, he said, who’d just finished making a film for television and was off back to Hollywood, but I could meet him at least. Talk about coincidence! He actually turned out to be the guy I’d met in a New York bar when I was drinking my way round the city, living the life with Matthew and Charley – before Dad died.’

  ‘And the film man liked your idea? Wasn’t it a bit tricky, though, explaining yourself? I mean, he’d have known you worked on the Post. Didn’t you have to tell him about dropping out and why you were in Canada?’

  ‘He’s had an edited version of why I’d left my job on the Post’s foreign desk. I had to swear him to secrecy and promise I hadn’t done anything he wouldn’t want. I also insisted on using the name I’d been writing under, I.D. Newel. He had a wobbly moment, thinking I could be a terrorist, but he remembered my New York drinking, which seemed to mollify him, and he was hooked on the script. He’s called Hank Patzer and we get on great.

  ‘My time at ARC had given me the idea, working with all the sad dropouts, the homeless and abused. They’re mostly spaced out on drugs, lives ruined by the drug dealers. I didn’t want to write about them directly – for Homeland read Homeless, that kind of thing. I was keener to be into the big timers. People are endlessly fascinated by the bad guys – they’re better box-office, to be crude about it. So I wrote about the shipping business, which seemed to have possibilities. The drugs have to get into Vancouver somehow and the cruise ships travel up from Mexico to begin popular trips up north. I had good captains, bad people, unwitting handlers, loud-mouthed tourists and little old ladies who wouldn’t have wanted to know what had been sewn into their padded winter coats.’

  ‘But that’s exactly like Shorelands!’ Nattie exclaimed. ‘You’re not telling me that’s you?’ She stared at him in wonder and he flashed her a proud smile.

  ‘Yes, I write the scripts. I’ve been living in California for the last couple of years. I’m working away on Season Four, upstairs in the study I’ve made for myself on the top floor.’

  She was astounded. ‘I can’t believe this. I don’t know what I’d thought. You’d obviously written something brill, but a whole, ongoing series? You’re famous, you clever old stick.’

  ‘I am, after a fashion, but it’s complicated. Everyone wants to interview me and I always refuse, which makes the media all the more curious. Hank’s been complaining that it’s hard to hold the line.’ Ahmed lifted his hand off the steering wheel and put it to her cheek. ‘We’re only just going to make it by half five, Nattie, darling, with this traffic.’

  ‘Best drop me near the tube station so I’m walking from the right direction.’ She was past worrying, too bemused and full of wonder. ‘Famous twice in your life, that’s some going – my small-screen genius and Hollywood recluse.’

  ‘Forget that. When can you come again?’

  ‘Not tomorrow with Hugo’s aunt to entertain,’ Nattie said, frustrated.

  ‘Tuesday – straight from the office?’

  ‘Lunchtime would be best. I haven’t negotiated a late pass with Jasmine. It won’t be easy to find times.’

  ‘Call me as you leave the office and I’ll be outside with the car.’ He gave her a quick glance. ‘I love you, Nattie.’

  She leaned close, but then straightened up again in a panic. ‘Shit! I’ve just remembered I’m supposed to have been shopping all afternoon. I’ll just have to say I couldn’t find a thing.’ She smiled, while feeling guilt settling in for the duration like heavy rain. It wasn’t going to let up either. Hugo needed her; the children needed her. And Ahmed’s words of love would be filling her brain; his touch would be warm on her skin.

  ‘I can solve the shopping problem,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit of serendipity, but I’ve been longing to buy you a present and it felt precautionary too, I thought you might need an excuse. I bought a dress online, but I think it’ll fit; it’s a blueberry colour. It wasn’t expensive, you could have bought it yourself.’

  He pulled up short of the tube station, reached behind his seat and handed over her bag and the carrier he’d picked up in the hall.

  ‘Don’t get out, better not.’ She gave his cheek a quick brush, trying to avoid tears. ‘And I want to rush home and try on my new dress. Thank you! Tuesday it is then,’ she said, damp-eyed, with her hand on the door handle, before tearing herself away.

  Hugo’s car wasn’t outside the house. Nattie unlocked the door, turned off the alarm and tried to de-tense her shoulders. It was muggy outside, but the hall felt chill and the house had an eerie stillness about it. She stood shivering a little before forcing herself into action. She went upstairs, her thoughts chasing each other, and into the bathroom to wash
away her sins. She was married to Hugo – married to the kind, handsome, loving, wrong man and sleeping with the right one.

  The blueberry stretch-velvet dress fitted. It had a low cowl neck, clung in the right places and was perfect for winter parties. She longed for Ahmed to see her in it. There was a pair of shoes in the bag as well, strappy sandals that encased the ankle. How did Ahmed know her shoe size? Nattie absorbed the labels to know where she’d been shopping, carefully laid out the dress on the bed and went downstairs.

  She got supper ready for the children. Hugo rang. He was about fifteen minutes away; he and Lily were trying to keep Thomas awake, he said, or he’d never settle to bed. They’d sung a lot of songs, ‘Old MacDonald’ more times than Hugo cared to say. She thanked him for coping so manfully and told him to hurry home.

  She made a mug of tea and wandered into the sitting room with it. The room felt airless and smelled of stale flower water. The shaggy garden roses in a jug vase on the mantelpiece had drooped and shed papery petals. They made her sad. Nattie brushed the ones around the vase into a wastebasket, bent down for others in the hearth and went to tip out the smelly water in the sink.

  She texted Ahmed to say the dress and shoes fitted perfectly, miraculously. How could he have known? The text he sent back brought a misty inward smile. She deleted the texts, unlocked the back door and went out into the drizzly garden to pick fresh roses.

  She sat at the kitchen table with a Sunday paper in front of her, the culture section, and peered at the week’s television programmes. Shorelands was on Thursdays, she knew that, but needed to see it there in print. It was hard to get her head round that little bombshell, though Ahmed always was full of surprises. She smiled to herself again then dropped her head into her hands and wept.

  15

  Hopes and Fears

  It was Wednesday, nearly two weeks since Nattie’s painful rejection. Hugo knew it was best to stand back and let her be, but he couldn’t hack it. He felt adrift, like a lost child in a department store, separated from all that was familiar and comforting. It was so unlike her and he had to find out what was going on. Some couples had sex-lite relationships and seemed to handle it, but he and Nattie had always got it together. The sex made everything possible – it helped to make up for her absent heart. It would break him to go on this way.

  Should he talk to Victoria? She was always sensitive to any nuances, but it was a delicate area. Not easy to explain that Nattie could be cooking, chatting, involved in his doings, right beside him and as far away as Tasmania. She smiled a lot, was warm, friendly and obliging, but not in bed; she was still frozen and backing off. And to think of her reaction that Friday night at his parents’ made Hugo shrink in his skin. Not the easiest thing to get across to her mother.

  He was on his way home and the tube train was swaying, making him feel slightly sick. The heat wasn’t helping, nor was the fug, the heaving crush and the stink of the Mexican, Thai, or whatever people were eating out of cartons, fucking anti-social on a packed train. It was October, for Christ’s sake, who needed an Indian summer? Hugo longed for some cooler autumnal weather.

  The train lurched and clanked to a stop with such a jerk that he nearly threw up. He felt better out in the open, striding down the leafy streets for home, glad to have got away early. He went in the door, heart lifting in anticipation. However full of tension, fearful and depressed he felt, seeing Nattie always brought a tingling rush.

  ‘Hi, Daddy,’ Lily said, looking up from her macaroni. ‘You’re first back.’

  ‘Why? Where’s Mum then?’ Lily shrugged and Hugo turned to Jasmine who was with her at the kitchen table, feeding Thomas. ‘Do you know where she is, Jasmine?’ he asked, with the feeling of nausea creeping back.

  ‘Not sure. She just said she’d be late today, back about seven, I think,’ Jasmine offered cheerfully while wiping Thomas’s mouth with a smelly-looking J-cloth.

  ‘Oh. Well, I wasn’t expecting to be home early,’ Hugo said, feeling defensive and annoyed to be making it so clear he hadn’t known. ‘I can take over now, Jasmine, you go on home. Keep the extra, of course, just whatever was arranged.’

  ‘No worries ’bout that. I’ll just shove this last mouthful into Tubsy then and be off. You’ll see to his afters? A chopped-up pear always goes down well and Lily will have a yoghurt – she knows which one she wants.’ Jasmine pushed in her chair. ‘Bye then, me lovelies,’ she said, planting kisses on their preoccupied heads. ‘Be good for your dad now, won’t you?’

  Hugo walked her to the door, hardly able to contain his urge for her to be gone. Where the hell was Nattie? It was irrational to be suspicious, he knew. There was probably a perfectly good reason. She’d told Jasmine she’d be late.

  ‘I wonder what’s keeping Mummy,’ he said vaguely, taking a pear from the fruit bowl. ‘Does Thomas have his pear with the skin off or on, do you know, Lily?’

  ‘Dunno. He eats anything, he’s a greedy pig. He’d eat a worm if you put it in his bowl. I want a raspberry yoghurt, Daddy.’

  ‘That’s no way to ask. What should you say?’

  ‘Pleeese may I have and thank youuu . . .’

  Hugo frowned. ‘Not good, Lily. They should teach you some manners at that school – and that means being polite and respectful to grown-ups, my girl.’

  Lily ignored him and concentrated on her yoghurt that smelled rather artificial, like the revolting dried raspberries in her morning cereal. Hugo washed the pear and left the skin on; he’d read somewhere that all the goodness in fruit and veg was just under the skin.

  ‘Can I have a carrot for Moppet – pleeese, Daddy?’ Lily asked, getting down. ‘Mummy says Tubsy should have a run-around after his dinner; she plays football with him on the grass.’

  The image brought a pang. ‘Okay, let’s go,’ Hugo said, opening the glass doors to the garden.

  The fragrances on the evening air were refreshing and helped to clear his head. He dribbled a few balls to his small toddling son, lost to his introspection, absorbing eventually, though, which played into his growing nervous rage, that dusk was closing in and he should start the bath. ‘That’s it, guys,’ he said, picking up Thomas and the ball. ‘Close up the hutch door, Lily, and come in now. It’s bath time.’

  He locked up behind them and was down on his knees in the kitchen, easing Thomas’s pudgy little feet out of his first pair of proper sturdy shoes when he heard the sound of Nattie’s key in the front door.

  ‘Hi, Jasmine!’ she called. ‘Sorry if I’m just a bit later than . . .’ She came into the kitchen, saw Hugo and her startled look said it all. He got up from his knees and faced her; she had gone as pale as if he were an intruder. ‘Hi, darling! Gosh, I wasn’t expecting you back so early. Jasmine’s gone? Nothing wrong, is there?’ She smiled, making a thin attempt to recover. ‘You’d said seven-thirty, though, or I could have planned things differently.’

  What ‘things’? What plans could she have changed?

  ‘You’re late, Mummy. Jasmine’s been gone ages,’ Lily admonished, as Nattie bent to kiss her. ‘I’ve fed Moppet, but dunno if the hutch is proply locked.’

  ‘I’ll check it out in a minute, love – or perhaps Daddy can,’ Nattie said, raising her eyebrows at him, ‘while we start the bath.’ She picked up Thomas who was clinging to her legs and made to leave, but Hugo stared at her coldly. He was tense, heart thudding, mentally forming the questions he wanted to put.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he queried slowly. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you’d asked Jasmine to stay on? Then I could have let her know that I was on my way.’

  ‘She’s easy about timing, we had it sorted, there was no need to bother you.’ Nattie sounded cooler, more in control. ‘I must get this show on the road now,’ she said firmly. ‘Upstairs we go, kiddos. How was school, Lily? Did you do sums?’

  ‘Yes, and drawing and singing. Daddy gave Tubsy his pear with the skin on, Mummy.’

  ‘It was washed,’ Hugo protested. ‘And he ate it all up
, didn’t he, cheeky girl?’

  Nattie was silent, preparing the supper. Hugo put a couple of mats on the kitchen table, cutlery and glasses, and opened a bottle of red Bordeaux. It was bargain-basement stuff, but drinkable, he’d bought a dozen bottles. He poured himself a large glass. Nattie didn’t want one. ‘Later,’ she said, filling a saucepan. He watched as she put on the rice to cook, sipping his wine, wanting her to feel his eyes on her, to know how hurt, suspicious and full of misgivings he felt.

  She chopped onions, tomatoes, peppers with concentrated briskness. ‘It won’t be the best supper,’ she said, without looking up. ‘I’ll do some shopping tomorrow.’

  ‘Where were you earlier? What kept you till seven?’

  She carried on chopping, didn’t look up. ‘I went to see Tom. He’d called yesterday, wanting an address, and he sounded a bit down; I do worry about him. I went round after work to have a cuppa and a catch-up.’

  Nattie slid the onions from the chopping board into a nonstick pan, shushing them round intently, adding the tomatoes and peppers and a handful of chilli flakes. Hugo was sure she’d flushed, talking about Tom; her discomfiture had been palpable. ‘Is Tom still living in Brixton and working out of that crap studio?’ he asked. ‘I can’t imagine many prospective clients making the trip.’

  ‘Don’t be so snobbish! It’s fabulous, with a perfect north light, and Tom has exhibitions in the West End. He’s doing fine. I just wish he’d find the right girl.’ Nattie turned, wooden spoon in hand, and looked Hugo in the eye. ‘Have you had a rotten old day or something? You seem in a bad mood.’

  ‘No, I’m not. But it wasn’t such a good day. Jeanie fucked up, just for a change; got the timing wrong for an important strategy meeting with the leisure people out in Staines. I’d ordered a car and was just leaving when they called, apologising if I was almost there, saying the chairman was delayed and the meeting pushed back till twelve. Jeanie got away with that one, but she’s a bloody liability.’