‘Oh yes. I forgot you were in on it all.’ His vigorous brows twitched as he remembered some bizarre conversation about the price of ‘River Number Four’. Something going on there he hadn’t quite fathomed. She was like that, this one with the hips. Mysterious. ‘How’s that boyfriend of yours?’ he enquired, in what he seriously thought was a casual tone.
‘Fine.’ Cautious but honest. Georgie congratulated herself. Of course Felix was fine. He wouldn’t be leaving her until he was sure of Flora. He was just clearing his way out. He had never been to 17A. He didn’t know that Flora was an environmental consultant with an ethereal cashflow and a burning ambition to jack it all in. He was still working on her as the killer bimbo from the drug company who was going to fund the next phase of his research.
Georgie crunched her biscotti; the crumbs met a giggle and she had to cough.
‘That good, eh?’ said Smiley-and-Beefy regretfully, slapping her on the back. ‘You’ll let me know if things change, won’t you?’
She reached over and squeezed his huge arm. ‘You’ll be the first.’
‘And who was that Scarey Power Woman who came along with Flora to my opening?’
‘Donna. Donna the prima donna. Head of New Business at Direct Warranty. Dillon’s boss until she fired him. Why?’
‘She needs some art,’ he said, sounding as if he’d been talking himself into this opinion for days. Which he had. ‘The walls of her soul are bare.’
‘If that’s the criterion, art is what she needs,’ Georgie agreed. ‘I could give you her number. Tell me, have you got a man with a van?’
‘Eh?’ He spluttered into his foam, perplexed.
‘A man with a van. When you crate up stuff at the end of a show and get it moved. Not a specialist fine art remover. Just a man with a van who owes you a favour. I need some stuff moved tomorrow morning.’
‘You’ll put in a word for me?’ negotiated Smiley-and-Beefy eagerly.
‘For what it’s worth. I’ll give you Donna’s direct line, mobile, home number and e-mail. And I’ll throw in dinner because I haven’t eaten all day and everyone’s been dumping their stuff on me and one biscotti doesn’t go far and I may shortly faint from hunger. You can choose the restaurant. How about it? Do we have a deal?’
‘Absolutely,’ promised Smiley-and-Beefy, pulling out his phone. ‘Let’s see if Momo can give us a table.’
Georgie got home late. Felix was already asleep but, wary of his morning habits, she chose to sleep on the sofa. She woke up early, copied some files from the computer then went out for more coffee. At eight-thirty, she was at her door to meet the locksmith.
‘Hello, darling,’ said Felix sleepily, when the drilling had woken him. ‘What’s going on? Did you lose your keys? I wondered where you were.’
‘I need the car,’ she said, holding out her hand. Felix stumbled back to the bedroom and returned a few seconds later with his own keys, which Georgie handed to the locksmith.
‘Would you mind taking this one off?’ she asked him, indicating the sliver of metal that would animate Flat Eric. How much better life would be when she had time to get rid of the power manicure.
Georgie threw the rest of the keys back to Felix, who muffed the catch and had to scoop them off the floor, dragging his bathrobe around his chicken knees. ‘You’re out of here,’ she told him.
‘Huh?’
‘You’d better get dressed. In about ten minutes a man with a van is coming round to move you out. You and your stupid furniture, your crap music, your espresso machine, your clothes, your books and your wine.’
‘Way to go!’ muttered the locksmith admiringly, through a mouthful of screws.
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Felix retorted. ‘You’re just being childish.’
‘Maybe,’ Georgie agreed. ‘I missed out on some of my childhood, remember? There are things I had to skip. Now I’d like to catch up.’ To the locksmith’s regret, she pushed Felix into the kitchen and shut the door. ‘All those vital developmental stages I need to complete. Like name-calling. You’re an arsehole. You’re a pretentious ass. You’re a control freak. You’d make Himmler look laissez-faire—’
‘Who?’
‘Himmler. The one who ran the SS. The one with two balls but very small.’
‘That was Goebbels.’
‘I think not. You’re a cultural illiterate. You’re a fuckwit. You’re a spam-head. You’ve got legs like a chicken and you make me sick.’
Felix folded his arms to stop his bathrobe gaping and assumed a superior smile. ‘Have you been talking to your friend Flora?’
‘Probably for the last time.’
‘Because I think she has some problems. She came to the clinic yesterday. She seems to have trouble dealing with reality.’
‘You may be right.’ Georgie enjoyed, that idea for the first time. ‘I think she’s been claiming she works for some drug company and earns a lot of money. Because you know she has this environmental aromatherapy business. If you can call it a business.’
‘You mean she’s completely, delusional?’ Felix struggled between hope and despair.
‘I know you two will be just perfect together. I’ve given the van driver her address.’
‘She was trying to suggest that you and she had been in some conspiracy to seduce me.’ Felix deployed his piercing look. ‘I mean, I know you, Georgina. I just couldn’t see it. I thought you understood how important it is to have trust in a relationship. You have your own problems, of course, we all do, but I’ve always thought that it was basically important to you to live with integrity.’
‘That’s why I’m throwing you out,’ she told him, as if explaining to a five-year-old child. ‘Now go and get dressed before the driver gets here.’
Felix looked at the seating arrangement in the living room at 17A. The choice was a rather passé purple futon which was losing stuffing from all its corners, a beanbag with a dark stain in its hollow and an old pine carver chair with a broken arm. There was a peculiar smell in the air. He picked the chair.
‘So,’ he said to Flora, trying a feel for the situation. ‘This is where you live?’
‘For the moment,’ she told him with a meaningful sigh.
‘And you work …’
‘Over there.’ She pointed, to her desk, a sagging trestle table whose paint-splattered legs emerged below a makeshift covering of torn oilcloth. A cardboard box contained some papers. To the side of the box was pinned a yellow note with a smiley face and the announcement, ‘I AM A MONEY MAGNET,’ printed in green ink. Another note was stuck to the grubby white wall and it read, ‘I WELCOME WEALTH INTO MY LIFE.’ The third one, taped to the front of Flora’s dog-eared Filofax, said, ‘I ACCEPT THE ABUNDANCE OF THE UNIVERSE.’
‘This is my product,’ she told him with pride, unplugging the Harmoniset. ‘It releases aromatherapy scents into the atmosphere. I get my oils from this little firm that imports high-grade organic …’
Felix felt faint. Georgina had been right. He had been conned. He was a victim. The impossible had happened.
He thought fast. Felix hated to look helpless. Women hated men to look helpless also. To a woman, neediness was a turn-off. It had never been his way to appeal directly to a woman’s generosity at the start of a relationship. Therefore he had not told Flora that he was looking urgently for a home. The van containing his possessions was parked around the corner and the driver was enjoying a pint and a pie in a pub at Felix’s expense.
Felix adjusted his perception of Flora. She was definitely not an attractive potential partner. She might be a passable prospect for sex. Apart from that, she had only one thing that he wanted.
‘Darling, are you OK?’ Flora sensed some turbulence in his aura. The aura that was normally as cool and unruffled as an alpine pool. Also, his skin tone seemed almost green.
‘I think my blood sugar’s a little low this morning.’
‘Let me get you some lemon tea with honey,’ she offered sweetly.
‘
Yes,’ said Felix, massaging his forehead with his fingertips. ‘Perhaps that would help.’
As soon as he heard her enter the kitchen, he reached for her Filofax and extracted Donna’s home address and telephone number.
‘So what made you decide to drop by?’ Flora enquired, trying to walk provocatively without spilling the tea.
‘I’m seeing a colleague in the Paediatric Department at Bart’s,’ he improvised, taking the mug from her and putting it down. ‘It seemed a good opportunity. Good heavens, is that the time? I’m sorry, sweetheart. I can’t be late. I’ll have to run.’
At the door he made himself kiss her. ‘I’ll call you,’ he promised. ‘Very soon.’
Flora knew exactly what that meant. She would never hear from him again unless he hit a dry weekend and was desperate enough to try it on for a shag. She had to stop herself from slamming the door behind him.
‘Fuck you!’ she muttered. ‘Fuck Georgie. Fuck everything.’
‘What a mare’s nest,’ said Georgie’s father sadly. ‘It sounds like Love’s Labour’s Lost in modern dress. I do despise modern dress.’
Flat Eric was carrying them smoothly along the leafy lane which led to the Sir Rudolph Trippitt Retirement Home for Actors. Her father’s new wheelchair rattled elaborately in the boot.
‘I thought something would have to give,’ he continued, watching the trees flash past. ‘You didn’t have as much fun as you deserved, did you? All work and no play, that was your story.’
‘Are you saying I’m dull?’ she demanded, touching the gas to flash past the car in front. Her father also despised fast driving, because it scared him.
‘You’re a dangerous woman,’ he chuckled, gripping the dashboard. ‘The best sort.’
‘So what am I going to do?’
‘Slow down,’ he advised firmly.
‘No, I mean about Dillon?’
‘I like the sound of him,’ said her father in a reflective tone. ‘He is the only character who comes out of this affair with any honour in the last act. I suppose he’s crawled away to lick his wounds?’
‘He isn’t answering his messages.’
‘Well, you’ll have to go and see him, won’t you? PDQ. None of this letting “I dare not” wait upon “I would”. You know that’s the right line. But it always sounds the wrong way round to me. Anyway, go to it, girl.’
20. May 14–28
Dillon looked around his flat. From the wreck of his life he had salvaged two suitcases of clothes, seven crates of books, five crates of music, one TV, a bag of stuff from the kitchen and his coffee table. The rest was to be consigned to the sea of fate. The new owner was buying the dining table, the chairs, the bookcases and the sofa.
He had refused to sell the bed. That deserved to be burned, infested as it was with bad memories. After considering the matter longer than it deserved, Dillon had resolved that to burn the bed would be giving Flora too much importance. A banal last journey to the public rubbish dump would be more fitting. He would throw it into the jaws of a municipal digger and with it ditch a major mistake and whatever weakness had led him to it. When he had sorted his head out, his heart would be clad in steel and he would never open it again to any female. Shag’em and dump’em, that would be his style. Rock till you drop. By the time he was fifty he would have been on a triumphant sex-binge for twenty years. He would be as sleazy as Rod Stewart and damn proud of it.
His car was not big enough to take the whole bed. It would need two trips. Today, Sunday, he would take the base, which had been made in two halves and was easy to dismantle. On Monday he would roll up the mattress and take that. Then he would dump the rest of his worldly goods in his mother’s garage and begin a new life.
The table, now revealed in its full glory, ought to be polished before it was stored. Dillon went out to buy polish, and was forced to travel to the supermarket a mile away.
While he was out, Georgie arrived in her car. The row of bulging black bin bags outside the door told her which building housed Dillon. She consulted the names on the state-of-the-art security system and tried his bell. There was no answer.
‘You want him?’ The owner of the kebab shop paused in the middle of cranking up his shutters and indicated the bin bags. ‘He just left. I see him. He moving out, you know.’
‘I know,’ she said.
‘Please, come in Have a drink,’ he invited her. Stale kebab fumes at ambient temperature gushed into the street as he opened the door.
‘Maybe later,’ Georgie promised him, and drove away to find somewhere more inviting to kill time.
When Dillon returned, the shop owner intercepted him. ‘Someone looking for you,’ he announced. ‘I know you not be long. I ask her to come in but she say maybe come back later.’
‘What was she like?’ Dillon asked, telling himself he didn’t want to know and it couldn’t possibly matter.
‘Nice girl,’ said the owner appreciatively.
‘Dark hair?’ Dillon suggested.
‘I don’t know. Maybe. Nice car.’
‘Oh right. I know who that is. Thanks,’ said Dillon. He decided to buy a Coke. Packing up your life was thirsty work.
Back in the flat, he polished his table until it gleamed like gold. It was a satisfying thing to do. He remembered the pleasure it had given him to make it, the excellent smell of the wood, the fun of drawing the design, the fascination of finishing every tiny sliver of ebony for the inlaying to the precise size it needed to be. Perhaps he had taken a wrong turning after that. Hell, the country was crawling with design millionaires. Why shouldn’t he be one of them? People would always need chairs.
He spun out the polishing as long as he dared, until a bare quarter of an hour before the dump closed. The owner helped him to carry the bed base down the stairs and load it into his car. Dillon found himself glancing apprehensively up the street. Did he want her to turn up or not? He wasn’t sure.
‘I’m going to the dump with this,’ he told his malodorous neighbour. ‘I’ll be about an hour.’
‘OK,’ the man assured him.
Ten minutes after he had gone, Georgie came back. She tried the bell once more. No answer.
A train began roaring over the railway bridge, drowning the street in noise. The shop owner shouted to Georgie, but she could not hear him. As he ran across the road to speak to her, she drove away without seeing him.
‘She was here!’ the man said indignantly when Dillon returned. ‘The same woman, here again! I say her to wait but she don’t hear me!’
‘Thanks.’ Dillon tried to sound as if he didn’t care. He tried to feel as if he didn’t care. Neither of these pretences was successful.
He cracked a beer and flopped down on the sofa. The television offered him a depressing game of cricket, the mating of the loggerhead turtle and two hundred Seventh Day Adventists singing spirituals in Bradford. He picked the turtles, killed the sound and decided to check his messages. There were five.
‘Um, this is Georgie,’ said the first one. ‘I know you may not want to hear from me, but I was wondering how you are.’
‘Me again,’ said the second. ‘I realised you don’t have my number any more.’ She repeated it twice.
‘Only Georgie again,’ said the third message.
‘God, this is embarrassing,’ sighed the fourth.
The fifth message was the longest. ‘Look, if you’re not answering, I don’t blame you. I can’t believe I got into anything so bad. I am sorry. I know it’s pointless me saying that. I just don’t want to leave it here. Look, I’m going to come over. See you if I see you.’
He decided to leave his phone on. He got a call from Des, ostensibly to confirm that he would come round for the keys at ten the next morning.
‘How are you?’ Des asked in a tentative voice.
‘Not too bad, thanks. I’m all packed.’
Hopefully, he mentioned, ‘Madam’s here.’
‘Did she ask you to tell me that?’ Dillon found he was snarling.
‘No, no. I just thought …’
‘I don’t care where she is. Anywhere she can eat shit and die would be fine by me.’
‘Why are you taking this so seriously?’ Des asked. It puzzled him that straights got so screwed up about sex. ‘It was only a bit of fun.’
‘Not for me,’ said Dillon. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’
He played his messages again. In the misty blue of the coral sea, the turtles paddled lustfully around each other, getting washed apart by the swell every time they made flipper contact. His thoughts swirled elusively, refusing to settle into a recognisable shape. He was hurt. He had been badly treated. They were all bad people. The future was exciting. The future was frightening. He wanted to see her. He did not want to see her. She had behaved the best of them. They had all behaved badly. He felt bad.
Eventually, he recalled a half-empty bottle of whisky in one of the crates and decided to drink enough of it to stop himself dreaming of Georgie. Just before he went to bed he decided to erase his messages.
At first, Dillon’s morning went exactly according to plan. At nine a removal van arrived and a disappointed pair of moving men loaded up his modest household and set off for his mother’s house in Hampshire. When Des arrived at ten, the mattress was squashed in the boot of the Saab and Dillon’s travelling bag was on the back seat.
‘That’s it then,’ Des observed, taking the keys which Dillon had ready for him. ‘So what’s next for you now? Where are you going?’
‘To the tip with that,’ Dillon told him, indicating the mattress, ‘and then to Spain.’
‘Have we got a forwarding address?’ Des’s pen was poised over his jotter. Dillon gave him his mother’s address.
‘Well, I’ll say, “hasta llego”,’ said Des, shaking his hand, ‘and good luck.’
Dillon drove away. Des, who expected the new owners of the flat in half an hour, bought himself a kebab and posed, leaning against the door, while he ate it.
Flat Eric glided to a halt in front of him. Des’s first thought was that Georgie’s haircut was still looking good and he had done a great job with it. Then he deduced that if Georgie was here, she was looking for Dillon. Which had to mean that she hadn’t scored with the bloke with great lats he’d seen her with in the J Bar on Saturday. Who had to be gay anyway. So something could come of the Heartswap madness after all. Des had never quite rejected the theory that all you needed was love.
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