After the Party

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘No,’ she waved her half-full mug at him, ‘I’m fine. Thank you.’

  They both smiled at the sound of Jessica’s shrieking laughter coming from elsewhere in the house. Jem was glad of the diversion from the slightly awkward fact of their aloneness. ‘She’s such a lovely little thing,’ she said, ‘your Jessica. So full of life and so friendly.’

  ‘Yeah,’ he smiled proudly, ‘I know. No idea where she gets it from!’

  Jem laughed.

  ‘Yes, she’s had a tough start in life – not easy, you know – but here she is, mad and glorious and just full of wonder. I thank God for her every minute of every day. I really do. Without her … well …’ He tailed off and smiled weakly at Jem. His eyes were glossy with tears. Jem looked away, surprised and shocked. This sudden show of emotion in a man whom she had previously imagined to be rather cool and steely was the last thing she had expected. ‘I tell you what,’ he said, getting to his feet again, ‘I know it’s early, but it’s raining, we’re killing time together, I think it would be perfectly acceptable to have a glass of wine, don’t you?’

  Jem breathed in sharply. There it was. The offer of wine. There was a sense of inevitability about it. And the moment was pivotal. Say no and it would be tantamount to saying, ‘This is just a play-date, back off, buddy.’ Say yes, and, well, it wasn’t tantamount to saying, ‘Sex? Now? Oh, yes please!’ but it certainly left things a bit more open. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I’m still breastfeeding so I can’t really go to town, but a small glass would be nice.’ She sighed with relief. She felt she’d made a sound compromise.

  ‘Good. Good.’ He clapped his hands together and headed for the kitchen. ‘Red? White?’

  ‘Whatever you’re having,’ she said.

  ‘And what about you?’ he said, appearing from the fridge with a bottle of something white. ‘How long have you lived round here?’

  ‘About four years, I suppose. We were in the flatshare in Almanac Road for about a month after we got together, then things there got a bit awkward so we got a flat in Lurline Gardens, you know, the mansion flats just behind Battersea Park. Then we bought here when I was pregnant with Scarlett. Only place we could afford a proper house.’

  ‘The classic manoeuvre,’ said Joel, inspecting two wineglasses for smudges. ‘What is it about us English and our need for stairs. Seriously. Don’t you think they’re overrated?’

  Jem laughed. ‘I guess so. But it’s not just about stairs, is it, it’s about gardens.’

  ‘Yes, there is that, although I have raised my own child quite happily without a garden for nearly four years. That’s the beauty of London: green stuff everywhere; you don’t have to walk too far. And Lurline Gardens, wow, right on Battersea Park.’

  ‘One-bedroom flat,’ she said.

  ‘Ah,’ he conceded, ‘fair enough.’

  He placed the glass of wine in front of her and she picked it up.

  ‘Cheers,’ said Joel, ‘here’s to killing time.’

  ‘Yes, indeed, killing time.’

  The first sip of wine seemed to bypass all the usual channels, hitting her somewhere around the left side of her head like an affectionate punch. She smiled at Joel. He smiled at her. ‘All quiet on the girl front,’ he said.

  ‘So far, so good. She’s a funny one, my Scarlett. A big fan of her own company. A big fan of home. Makes her easy to manage in some ways – she can just spend hours pottering around doing her own thing – but socially, she can be a bit awkward.’

  ‘And where does she get that from, do you think?’

  Jem shrugged. ‘No idea. I’m pretty sociable. So’s Ralph. Well, he used to be!’ She laughed and rubbed her forearm.

  ‘Before he lost his mojo?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, before he lost his mojo.’

  ‘Will you ever forgive him?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘Ralph. Will you ever forgive him?’ He was staring at her, not as intently as the question he’d just asked might have suggested, but rather in fond concern.

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For buggering off to California and leaving you on your own with two kids?’

  Jem put her glass down and got to her knees to pluck the increasingly complaining Blake from the carpet and consider the question. Should she be offended? Outraged? Perturbed? She didn’t know. She just knew that she felt relieved that he’d asked it.

  She brought Blake to the sofa and sat him on her lap. ‘Interesting question,’ she said. ‘And you know, I’m not sure I will. Although I will say that I have enjoyed some time to myself. I think I needed a break too. Though I would quite like it to have been me having the break in paradise!’

  ‘Hmm.’ Joel tented his fingers and appraised her over them.

  ‘Hmm, what?’ she smiled.

  ‘I just find it really interesting.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The whole set-up. You, your single-mother persona, your artist partner, the mojo-hunting. It just makes me wonder about stuff, that’s all.’

  ‘What kind of stuff?’

  ‘Well, the nuclear family, the truth of it. I suppose I’ve always seen myself as set apart from that kind of normality, I’ve always been the outsider, the single dad. And I’ve made assumptions about the people I’ve seen doing things the conventional way, that they’ve had it easier than me, that they’re somehow, not superior, but just kind of elevated from me. The dichotomy, that life would be easier if I lived with the mother of my child, but that also it wouldn’t be as challenging, as interesting, that somehow my experience of parenting is more valid than yours because I’ve got all these issues. But you’re making me question all that. You know, you’ve got the house, the two kids, the nice little family-of-four thing going on. Except it’s not as perfect as it looks, is it?’

  Jem smiled. ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s not. And there are times when I wonder if it wouldn’t be easier if I did it by myself. I mean, this week, for example. It’s been a revelation. It took approximately twenty-four hours to get used to him not being around. Because really, and this is a hard thing to say, but really, even when he is there, he’s not. You know?’

  Oh, my husband doesn’t understand me. Jem checked herself. That was enough personal stuff. She was giving this stranger too much. It felt dangerous and strangely disloyal.

  ‘You mean, he’s not there, emotionally?’

  ‘Oh,’ she tried to shrug it off, ‘it’s not that. It’s just, men, you know, they always manage to find ways of being busy that don’t involve doing anything remotely useful. I don’t suppose he’s much different from anyone else, just that when there’s a new baby around it sort of magnifies everything. All the discrepancies. You know.’

  Joel smiled knowingly, having clearly picked up on her sudden defensiveness. ‘All men are useless,’ he intoned.

  ‘No. No, it’s not that. I don’t subscribe to that, just that there is this weird thing that happens when two people who are equal in every way except their gender procreate. There’s this sort of primal separation, this kind of caveman thing that kicks in, and the man just suddenly thinks it’s OK to let the woman do eighty per cent of the work.’

  ‘Oh God, now you’re making me wish I was married!’

  Jem laughed. ‘No, but it’s true and it’s not just me. It happens to nearly everyone I know and, as my sister said, you either fight it or get used to it. I suppose I’ve got used to it. But this week apart, it’s been, well, it’s been interesting. I think things are going to have to change when he gets back.’

  ‘Well, maybe he’ll have changed when he gets back. Maybe that’s part of the reason he went?’

  Jem shrugged. ‘We will see,’ she said, ‘we will see.’

  ‘And when is that? When is he coming back?’

  ‘Saturday morning.’

  Joel nodded. ‘So, two more days of solitude.’

  ‘That’s right. Two more days of coping on my own without hating anyone for it.’ She glanced at Joel, who
smiled at her questioningly. ‘I guess you’re used to that then?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes. But then, I’ve only got the one. And I’ve been coping on my own since day one, pretty much, so never had to hate someone for not being more helpful.’ He smiled and Jem laughed.

  Blake was growing increasingly wriggly on her lap and as much as Joel had just offered her the perfect opportunity to ask about Jessica’s mum, Jem really had to deal with her baby and, dealing with her baby, she increasingly recognised, would require giving him a feed. She’d been expecting this, she’d known that at some point while she was here Blake would get hungry and that she would have to reveal a naked breast in the presence of a strange man, but now that it was actually turning into a reality she was losing her nerve.

  Breastfeeding had been a revelation to Jem, something she’d never envisaged herself doing, something she’d undertaken purely because as a middle-class mum in a certain London postcode it was somehow expected of her, and something she’d taken to so naturally that she’d never questioned it for a moment. Before she’d had children she’d been of the opinion that breast-feeding was something very personal and, like other bodily functions, should be conducted somewhere private. But from the moment she’d taken the infant Scarlett out in public for the first time she’d known that unless she wanted to spend her entire life in a branch of John Lewis, that was neither practical nor desirable, and anyway, she felt utterly unselfconscious about it. But this, this was awkward. There was sex in this room. Not blatant sex, but quiet, surreptitious sex, twitching and tugging at the corners of their conversations, ruffling the still air like gentle fingertips through a calm pond, and now, at the prospect of an unclasped bra, an unleashed breast, the sound of her young son taking from her body, Jem froze.

  ‘I, er, I need to feed him. Is that OK?’

  Joel gazed at her for a moment, not sure what she was asking. A second later he worked it out. ‘Ah, right, yes, of course, go ahead. I’ll go and check on the girls, give you some privacy.’ He smiled and left the room.

  By the time he came back five minutes later, Jem was neatly arranged with a baby at her breast, her scarf covering the top of her breast, her baby covering the bottom, and Blake was fast asleep.

  She smiled at Joel. ‘How are they getting on?’

  ‘Brilliant,’ he said. ‘Something to do with stickers and reward charts. I think Jessica might just have tried to put Scarlett in the naughty corner but she wasn’t having any of it.’

  ‘That sounds about right,’ laughed Jem.

  ‘More wine?’ he asked.

  Jem looked at her empty glass and her sleeping baby. She wouldn’t have to feed him again now for a couple of hours, she could have one more, and suddenly she really, really did want another one. Her baby was asleep, her big girl was playing happily, the sun was going down and there was no rush to get home, nobody waiting for her, nobody to explain to where she’d been and what she’d been doing. She could relax. She could get to know this shabby, bright, mysterious and oddly attractive man in an adult, slightly reckless way. She could even flirt and get pink-cheeked and let him tease her. They could talk into the early evening. Maybe he would move from his eyrie on the old swivel chair across the room and share the sofa with her. Maybe they’d accidentally touch. Maybe they’d start to reminisce about their youths, about their half-travelled lives, their histories, their mistakes, their goals, their dreams. Maybe she’d have a third glass of wine. And maybe something would happen here today that could never be physical but could be something even more powerful. And it all hinged on another glass of wine.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, holding out her empty glass. ‘That would be lovely.’

  Chapter 11

  The last time Ralph had been in a church was, predictably, for a friend’s wedding. Churches tended to lose some of their ‘churchness’ when filled with non-believing thirtysomethings and their offspring. They felt more like holding centres, departure lounges, somewhere to wait awhile before escaping, somewhere stripped of anything godly or ethereal. It was almost as if, sensing the approach of a wedding party, God packed a small bag and left through the back door, muttering something about coming back when it was all over.

  As a child Ralph had been taken to church every Sunday, 10.45 a.m., the same vaguely sticky pew, the same indigo-blue hymn books, the same overlarge family to their left, the same baggy-faced man in a cassock talking about the same improbable parables and biblical anecdotes in the same slightly camp voice. Ralph had never felt anything but boredom and resentment in church as a child. This was the first time he had been, willingly and for no good reason, to a church since he was fifteen years old.

  Rosey’s church was out of town, along the coast, a small clapboard building that wouldn’t have looked out of place on a prairie. The car park was empty. There was no service. ‘I don’t like services,’ she explained. ‘I just like to sit there. On my own.’

  Ralph shrugged awkwardly. ‘You should have said …’ he began.

  ‘No, I don’t mean all on my own, I just mean not as part of a crowd, all that standing up and sitting down and standing up and sitting down. And then, Christ, even worse, all that singing and hallelujah-ing and Jesus-ing. Not to mention the God-awful clapping.’

  ‘Listen,’ he began tentatively. ‘About last night. I’m really sorry. If I embarrassed you.’

  ‘Embarrassed me?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I was very drunk and I think I might have been, well, overly complimentary, let’s put it that way.’

  ‘Christ, yeah,’ said Rosey, turning to smile at him. ‘There’s nothing I hate more than getting too many compliments.’

  ‘No, I mean, I shouldn’t have. It was …inappropriate.’

  ‘It was fine, Ralph,’ she said, opening the car door. ‘Really. It was sweet. And if you did want to paint me, well, I certainly wouldn’t say no.’

  Ralph smiled. ‘I wish I could,’ he said, ‘but only two more days.’

  ‘True,’ she said, swinging a tanned leg out on to the gravelled forecourt, ‘but hey, you could do me from memory.’ She winked, and Ralph smiled.

  Ralph followed her through into a small sunny entrance hall. The walls were painted white and hung with brightly coloured paintings and notices about yard sales and Bible meetings and sewing circles. Two huge patchwork quilts acted as partitions into the main body of the church, each patch hand-crafted by a parishioner and illustrating some small detail about the area. Inside the church, the sun pushed through wide stained-glass windows on to pews carved from pale honey-coloured wood and strewn with multicoloured cushions in shades of green, red and blue. A large gold and red banner hung behind the small altar, embroidered with an image of Jesus holding his hand to his bleeding heart, his other hand held out towards a dove. There was no gloomy organ music, no dry coughs, no gluey stench of incense and burning candles, just the sun, light and clear, the salty whisper of a sea breeze through the open door, the sense of something living and breathing.

  ‘Can you see why I make the journey out here?’ Rosey asked him. ‘It’s a cute little place, eh? Got something a bit special about it.’

  Ralph sat down next to Rosey and, without even thinking about it, he closed his eyes. He let the background noise come to him. Small birds. Early evening cicadas. A moped turning a corner. The ocean. Rosey’s steady breathing. The blood going through his head. And somewhere out of sight, to the side of the altar, a man clearing his throat, the chink of a coffee cup. He glanced at Rosey, took in her remarkable profile. Her eyes were closed and her head was slightly bowed. He remembered her touching her fingertips to her lips after their kiss last night. He wanted to touch her lips too, to echo her gesture and bring it back to life, but he knew deep inside that he wouldn’t and that he couldn’t. He ached for the need to hold her and explore her but he never would. There was too much at stake.

  Instead he let his chin drop into his chest and then he found himself doing something remarkable; he found himself p
raying. It seemed so obvious all of a sudden. He was a man with issues, a man feeling lost and directionless and here he was in a place, small, bright and still, where he could not just dwell on his state of mind but almost open a tiny door in his head and see what happened. And what happened was quite extraordinary.

  As the silence drew out and Ralph’s contemplation expanded into reverie, Ralph found himself talking to someone. It was not a conventional conversation, mainly because it was happening inside his head and because there were no words involved, but it had all the cadence and rhythm of conversation, the speaking and the listening, the pauses and the intonations. There were no questions and answers, just needs and silent reassurance. It was like having a massage, as though someone were silently kneading all the knots out of his psyche. It was a strange, gentle, overwhelming catharsis and through this odd jumble of emotions and sensations he felt something else: Rosey’s hand curling around his on the pew between them. He opened his eyes and stared first at their entwined hands and then at her in surprise.

  ‘Are you OK?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yeah,’ he nodded.

  ‘You sure?’

  He nodded again and then realised, as he felt a wetness around his nostrils, that he was crying. He breathed in deeply, keen to take away the unexpected tears, but it was too late.

  ‘You wanna talk about it, or would you rather just be?’

  He smiled, pathetically, gratefully. ‘I’m OK,’ he said. ‘I’m just, you know, it’s OK. It’s OK.’

  She squeezed his hand one more time and then moved her hand back into her lap.

  He glanced at his hand and then he shut his eyes, squeezing back deeply against the tears that he couldn’t control. He tried to analyse this sudden onset of emotion, tried to work out where it had come from. What had been the trigger? And then he realised. It was just now, while he was praying, communing, contemplating, whatever the hell it was he’d been doing, he’d suddenly realised that everything was going to be all right. It was easy! All he had to do was to take himself out of the centre of absolutely everything. All he had to do was to surrender. Surrender himself to Jem, surrender himself to his family and surrender himself to his existence. But, in order to do all of that, first of all he needed to surrender himself to something else entirely, and he wasn’t sure what that was, but he’d felt it just now and he thought, yes, he really did think, he could barely bring himself to formulate the concept, but it was there, it was real and he thought it might be God.