The Truth Club

by Grace Wynne-Jones

‘Sally!’ He sees me at the same moment and bounds over. ‘I knew I saw you a while back, but then you disappeared on me. That’s why I had you called.’

  ‘I’ve been sitting on the same seat for almost an hour,’ I reply primly, though I feel like tipping slowly sideways and lying down on the floor.

  ‘No, you haven’t.’ His blue eyes hold mine. ‘I was going over to talk to you, and then suddenly you weren’t there.’

  That must have been the time I dashed into the loo, I think. But I don’t say it. What on earth is he doing here?

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Nathaniel gets to the question first. He is standing too close. I can feel his breath on my cheek.

  ‘I’m waiting.’ I look up at him; then I look away.

  ‘Waiting for what?’ He leans towards me. Our foreheads are almost touching.

  ‘For a flight to San Francisco.’

  I can feel the words land on him. I can actually feel his surprise. ‘San Francisco?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I said,’ I reply briskly.

  ‘Why?’ He is just standing there, amazed and bewildered.

  ‘I want to visit my sister, April.’

  He absorbs this information solemnly. ‘When’s your flight?’ It’s only now that I notice he has luggage with him, a compact leather holdall. He must have just arrived back from his trip with Fabrice. I look around anxiously. Thank goodness, she doesn’t appear to be with him.

  ‘I don’t know. It might be at three. They’re going to call me.’ As I say it, it sounds more and more improbable.

  ‘Where’s your luggage?’ His blue eyes have darkened. No one has ever looked at me like that before. No one has searched my face so hard for my secrets. I suppose all his women feel like that. ‘He makes you feel like you’re the only person in the room. He has such charisma…’ I can almost hear them saying it.

  ‘It’s none of your business where my luggage is.’ I turn to leave – I can’t face explaining it to him – but he grabs my arm and holds it firmly.

  ‘You just decided to go to San Francisco today, didn’t you?’ His eyes are boring into me.

  I try to pull away from him, but he won’t let me go.

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘We need to talk. You need to talk, Sally,’ he says firmly.

  ‘Let go of my arm.’

  He does. I consider dashing away like a sprinter; then I realise that’s ridiculous. This whole situation is ridiculous. Maybe I should just go home and have a long bath.

  ‘What’s happened to you, Sally?’ He brushes a stray strand of hair from my cheek. ‘What’s made you so desperate?’

  ‘Nothing.’ The word trips off my tongue like it used to when I was a teenager and I thought everyone, especially my parents, wouldn’t understand.

  ‘OK, so you’re just fine, are you?’ He is guiding me gently towards the café. ‘You’re just fine and dandy, but you thought you’d like a change of country.’

  ‘And I need to see my sister April.’

  ‘Why?’ he asks gently, softly. I wish he didn’t speak like that. I wish he didn’t know how to lure these details out of me.

  ‘Because… because she wants to announce that my father isn’t her father, at this stupid family get-together we’re having.’

  I splurge it out in one breath and then slump onto a chair in the café. It isn’t a very comfortable chair. Nothing about this airport seems comfortable or tender. It should be, with so many people saying goodbye to things, to the people they love.

  ‘And is that true?’

  I stare at him dumbly.

  ‘About April. Is she really your half-sister?’

  ‘Yes, of course it is.’ I sigh. ‘But she doesn’t need to make a scene out of it. She could… she could break it to people more gently. Or let my parents find a way to say it themselves.’ I feel terribly tired suddenly. I feel like I’m already jet-lagged. This day seems to have lasted an entire week, and it’s only 1.30.

  ‘And that’s the only reason you’re going to California?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ I drag the words out of myself. ‘Maybe. It’s complicated.’

  ‘You need a cup of tea, don’t you?’ Nathaniel looks at me so sympathetically that I feel I might cry. Why did he have to turn up now? It makes leaving so much harder.

  ‘Yes, a cup of tea would be nice,’ I mumble.

  ‘What kind?’

  I just sit there for a moment. I have no idea what kind of tea I want – herbal or Earl Grey, English Breakfast or Darjeeling. It seems like a huge decision. ‘Just tea… any kind of tea. You decide.’

  ‘OK, but promise to stay there until I get back.’ He glances at me anxiously.

  I nod. I’m too exhausted to run off. How can I have thought I didn’t have any luggage? I have so much emotional baggage I should get a trolley.

  Nathaniel seems to return in a matter of moments. He has remembered how much milk I take, and when I sip the tea I discover he has put in just the right amount of sugar. Just sitting here with him makes things better. I decide not to mention Fabrice. I really don’t think I’d like to hear the details.

  ‘You’ve… you’ve just flown in from somewhere, haven’t you?’ I say slowly.

  He nods.

  ‘So why are you in the departures area? You should be in arrivals.’

  He grins sheepishly. ‘I got lost. I was trying to find the bank. I’ve been going up and down the escalators like a total bloody idiot. I thought I was going crazy, because I know where the bank is – or, at least, I usually do. It began to feel like looking for a Chinese takeaway – do you remember that evening?’

  Of course I do. How could he have thought I would forget it?

  ‘I suppose I was looking for you, only I didn’t know it.’ He reaches out and touches my palm. He makes small circles in its centre. It is such an intimate and unexpected gesture, and so totally right. This is just the kind of thing I don’t need right now. It might make me tell him I’ve fallen hopelessly in love with him. And he’d be understanding about it – because, let’s face it, he must hear that kind of thing pretty often. He’d probably even be sympathetic.

  I shift restlessly in my seat. ‘I should go, Nathaniel. They may call me any minute.’

  ‘I once did what you’re planning to do,’ he says calmly.

  ‘Where did you go?’

  ‘New Orleans. I wanted to go to Costa Rica, but I didn’t have enough money. I just needed to get out of New York for a while, be somewhere different – I wanted to be someone different. I was having doubts about everything – Ziggy, my job, the ridiculously expensive new suit I’d bought that didn’t fit me properly. I think it was the suit that did it, actually.’ He laughs his bright, gleeful laugh. ‘It seemed fine in the shop, but that was because I hadn’t actually walked in the thing. I had to contort my entire body just to get across a room.’

  I find myself smiling. He always manages to make me smile, eventually.

  ‘People kept saying what a lovely suit it was, even though it made me feel like a hunchback. My life felt just like that suit: I had to contort myself to a ridiculous extent to fit into it, and nobody seemed to notice. It was the loneliest feeling. Should I get some biscuits?’

  ‘No. I don’t eat biscuits any more,’ I say. ‘I’m on a diet.’

  ‘Of course it seems crazy now, flying off somewhere because of a bloody suit. I should have just chucked it and put it down to experience.’

  ‘What happened in New Orleans?’

  ‘It was fun, even though I found a cockroach under my bed in the dirt-cheap hotel. I went out. I wandered around and looked at things. I ate. It’s a lovely city. It was different, but I was still the same. That’s when I knew I had to let some things go – some beliefs about myself.’ He starts to fiddle with a spoon. ‘And that’s hard. It’s what I’d been trying to avoid, I suppose. I’d been living with this idea that there was some better place I had to find. But what I realised was that finding it might be more an internal dec
ision than a question of location – though, of course, some locations are better than others. I still have a hankering to go to Costa Rica.’

  ‘What did you do with the suit?’

  ‘I gave it to Ziggy. She got it altered. She wears it with a feather boa. Of course, I could have got it altered too, but it didn’t occur to me at the time. I think I’d wandered into a rather primitive part of my brain. I really should have made more of an effort to use my neo-cortex.’ He looks over at the food counter. ‘Do you think they do baked beans on toast?’

  ‘Probably. What’s a neo-cortex?’

  ‘It’s the part of the brain that can see the bigger picture – along with other things, of course. It sees a whole range of alternatives. But you can’t access it if you’re too emotionally aroused, so things seem black and white.’ He looks at someone carrying a loaded tray. ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t mind some scrambled eggs too.’

  I remember the important-looking psychology books on the floor of his flat. ‘So is this why we’re talking, Nathaniel?’ I say slowly. ‘You wanted to calm me down?’

  ‘Yes. Of course, I wanted to talk to you, too,’ he admits cheerfully. ‘To be honest, Sally, if you’re going to California I think you should pack. I really missed not having a spare T-shirt or boxer shorts in New Orleans. I didn’t even have an extra pair of socks.’

  I suddenly feel defensive. ‘This is an entirely different situation, Nathaniel. My sister needs me. I am calm. I’m very calm.’ I lift my cup with trembling fingers. ‘I’ve thought it all through very carefully.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  I stare at the table.

  ‘And Diarmuid will miss you, won’t he? What about Diarmuid?’

  ‘Look, it’s only a visit!’ I snap. ‘It’s not like I’m planning to –’

  ‘Disappear like DeeDee?’

  ‘Don’t finish my sentences,’ I protest. ‘That isn’t what I was going to say. I’ve forgotten about DeeDee; I know I’ll never find her.’

  ‘What were you going to say, then?’

  ‘I was going to say…’ I clench my fingers into my palms so hard that it hurts. ‘I was going to say that none of this is your business.’

  ‘What’s happened with Diarmuid?’ Is he psychic? He reaches for my hand and touches the tips of my fingers. ‘I’m sorry he found us together like that. It was all very… very awkward.’

  ‘As you made clear at the time,’ I say tightly, recalling the appalled look on his face.

  ‘Is it over, then?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Your marriage.’

  Am I really that transparent?

  ‘And now you’re wondering how I know. It’s because I know that look on your face, Sally. I’ve seen it on my own. You feel things leaving and you don’t know what’s going to take their place, and everything seems very stark and strange, almost unreal.’

  I feel an ache in my heart. How can I not love someone who knows these things about me? But what do I know about him? He is basically a stranger. He flew off somewhere with Fabrice, for God’s sake! He has a whole hidden life that he never even mentions.

  I can’t even look at him. ‘Yes, you’re right. Diarmuid has found someone else… and it’s not a mouse.’ I smile feebly. It isn’t even funny. ‘It turns out Diarmuid’s very decisive. He doesn’t hang around and fret, like I do. He replaced me with surprising speed and efficiency.’

  ‘And you find that just a bit offensive?’

  ‘I suppose I have no right to feel offended, really,’ I say hesitantly. ‘I mean, I’m the one who left him first.’

  ‘Feelings aren’t quite that clear-cut, though, are they? From what you’ve said, it sounds like you feel he left the marriage almost as soon as it started – only, of course, he was in the same house.’ A faraway look enters Nathaniel’s eyes. ‘That’s what I felt with Ziggy, anyway. She was there but she wasn’t there, if you know what I mean.’

  ‘At least she didn’t have long conversations with mice.’

  ‘She had long conversations with her lover instead,’ he says. ‘I think I would have preferred mice.’

  I know I should say something sympathetic, but I can’t – not now that Greta has told me about Ziggy’s phone calls. Nathaniel is leaving that bit out, of course. There are probably loads of things he leaves out every time we talk.

  ‘The thing about the mice,’ I begin, realising how stupid and improbable it sounds, ‘was that I couldn’t really complain about them without sounding daft. A lover would almost have been easier, in a way.’

  ‘I once had a client whose husband was obsessed with a stick insect.’

  I want to burst out laughing, but then I see Nathaniel’s expression and realise it’s true.

  ‘He used to take Candice – that was the insect’s name – out to the garden every weekend and sit with her. He said she needed to get out and about a bit. Then he’d go upstairs and clean her cage, and go to the pet shop to make sure she had all the food she needed, and by that time it was too late for him and his wife to go out for the day. No one believed his wife until they actually saw him sitting on his deckchair, watching Candice and ignoring everyone else.’

  ‘What did the wife do?’

  ‘She boiled Candice up and fed her to him in a tuna sandwich.’

  I gulp.

  ‘No. That’s what she would have liked to do.’ He laughs. ‘She left him and got very involved in Buddhism. She said she would never marry again.’

  ‘I can understand that,’ I say softly. ‘I don’t want to marry again either. It just doesn’t suit me.’

  I wonder if I should go to the standby desk. I’ve been listening for my name. Maybe the woman has forgotten me. Instead I say, ‘If it’s not mice or stick insects it’s the Internet, or golf, or the pub. Haven’t you noticed that, Nathaniel? People get married and then, after a few months or years of romance – if they manage to have them – they start to devise ways to be apart from each other.

  Especially the men, I’m afraid.’ I look at him reproachfully. ‘Women keep saying, “Please talk to me,” and men keep saying, “Not now, dear, I’m watching football.”’

  ‘Not all men,’ Nathaniel corrects me. ‘It was Ziggy who didn’t want to talk to me.’

  ‘Yes, yes, but you’re not typical!’

  ‘Thank you.’ He grins at me. Am I actually blushing?

  ‘Everyone’s looking for love, Sally,’ he says softly. ‘Everyone and everything in this universe wants to be loved and to love. It’s just that sometimes we get a bit battered about and forget that. Or we look in the wrong place and then decide it’s not anywhere, that it’s some sort of awful twisted joke.’

  Then he adds, ‘I got a call from her about a year ago. She’s married again and living in New Mexico.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘The stick-insect woman. And her ex-husband now talks to a dog – which is a step up the communication ladder, I suppose. He sometimes phones her and says he misses her, and she tells him to take the dog for a walk. It seems to be working.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, people stop him and say, “What a lovely dog! What breed is it?” and he tells them it’s some exotic kind of spaniel. He’s even got quite pally with a woman he met in the park. Life can be so bloody difficult sometimes that some people just end up feeling more comfortable with animals than with people.’ He smiles wryly. ‘There’s been some fascinating research about the number of women who feel, deep down, that their closest significant relationship is with their cat.’

  I remember the sudden adoration I felt for Blossom when I went riding. She seemed to care about me unconditionally. And, of course, she didn’t buck me off. I was immensely grateful to her. ‘By the way, I read your column – the latest one. I really liked it.’

  It takes me a moment to register what he has said. I’m still thinking of Blossom and her big, understanding eyes, the lovely smell of her shiny hair. ‘I’m glad you liked it,’ I say. �
�But Greta thinks it’s crap.’

  ‘Good old Greta. She’s delightfully mercenary.’

  ‘Fred has been driving her crazy. He’s been howling and scratching at the door and trying to bury her jewellery.’

  ‘Oh, poor Fred.’ Nathaniel’s face grows solemn. Suddenly it feels like Nathaniel and I are in our own little world at this table, but we’re not. He’s being kind and thoughtful and sweet, and I wish he’d stop – because then I wouldn’t want to kiss him. I even love his stupid car. It seems right that it isn’t sleek and shiny like everyone else’s. It seems like our car, somehow – the kind of car people like us should have.

  ‘Greta told me about you and Fabrice flying off together.’ I decide just to say it.

  ‘Oh, did she?’

  ‘Yes. Did you have a nice time?’

  ‘Yes, thank you. Very nice.’

  I wait for him to say more, but he looks tight-lipped and secretive. ‘So you really want to fly somewhere today, do you?’ he enquires suddenly.

  ‘I don’t know any more.’ I sigh. ‘Maybe you’re right. Maybe it isn’t such a good idea.’

  ‘We should go somewhere closer.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Now that I come to think of it, you really do need to get away, Sally. Let’s just do it.’

  ‘Do what?’ I frown.

  Nathaniel’s eyes have brightened. He suddenly looks very enthusiastic. ‘Let’s go to London.’

  ‘Now?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘I don’t want to go to London.’

  ‘You will when we get there.’

  I hear my name called. Suddenly I don’t want to go anywhere. I just want to go home.

  ‘You have to come with me. It’s really important. There’s someone I want you to meet.’

  I gawp at him. Why on earth is he saying this now? Why London, of all places?

  ‘Come on, Sally. Let’s go to that standby desk of yours,’ Nathaniel says. Then he grabs my arm and pulls me from my seat.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Nathaniel and I are walking down a swanky street in Chelsea. There is an autumnal chill to the late afternoon. I don’t know what I’m doing here. I can’t believe I let him talk me into this.