by Meg Mason
He did not want one and with my mouth full I said, ‘Are you exclusively into country, or do you like other kinds of music as well?’
‘I don’t like country. I just like that song.’
‘Why?’
He told me he appreciated the key change. Later I found out it was because, at an airport once when he was young, it started playing over the speakers and hearing it, his father said casually, ‘This was your mother’s favourite song.’ Personally, he said he’d never understood how such an intelligent woman could bear its cloying sentimentality and over-egged melody. At some point, before it finished, it occurred to Patrick that he was listening to words his mother would have known off by heart. He had already lost his memory of her voice but from then on, whenever he listened to the song, Patrick felt as though he could hear her. That is why he still played it whenever he was by himself in the car.
I was suddenly tired, and hungry, and asked Patrick to tell me about what he had been up to for the last four years and said I would be listening even though my eyes were going to be shut. He told me he was training for his specialism, that he’d planned to do obstetrics but had changed to intensive care at the last minute, and was applying for an overseas placement, somewhere in Africa, because you got extra points or something.
Without opening my eyes I said, ‘Are you still with Jessamine?’ knowing he wasn’t. Ingrid had called to tell me they had broken up, weeks after she’d called to tell me they were together.
He said, ‘What? No. That was short-lived. And regrettable. Nothing to do with Jessamine. Just, we’re quite different people.’
‘What happened?’ I opened my eyes.
‘It was when I started to think about the Africa thing and when I told her about it, she said that although she adored me, the whole Médecins Sans Frontières vibe didn’t really work for her. She said I should be a dermatologist.’
‘A famous one?’
‘Ideally. I believe she’s only dated men in finance since then.’
I said, ‘In three out of five cases they are called Rory.’
‘So you already knew we –’
‘It was four years ago, Patrick, of course I did.’
15
IN A MOVIE, if someone who is happy coughs, the next time you see them they will be dying of cancer.
In real life, if someone realises when the car stops in front of her house that she is disinclined to get out and knows it isn’t just the idea of going inside and passing her parents’ closed door on the way to her room that is keeping her from undoing her seatbelt; if she knows it is because she does not want to say goodbye to the person who has driven her home and would rather sit and keep listening to him talk even though what he has been talking about is mostly quite boring, to do with his work; if it seems like he does not want her to get out either from the way he keeps looking down at her hand to see if she has moved it yet to the buckle, the next time you see them they will be walking to a terrible but open café that she points to at the end of the street and says, ‘We could have breakfast if you want.’ ‘Although,’ she adds ‘we will both come out smelling like fat’ to make it easy for him to turn her down.
But he says, ‘That’s okay. Good idea’ and undoes his own seatbelt, trying to get out while it is still retracting because he wants to open her door and to begin with, she does not understand what is happening, why he has suddenly appeared on her side of the car when the inside handle doesn’t seem to be broken because no one has ever opened the door for her before, not even as a joke. He will say, once she is out of the car, ‘Do you want to get changed first,’ and she will look down at her uncle’s dog-walking jacket over her silk bridesmaid’s dress but say, ‘No, it’s fine’ because she does not want to leave him, standing here, on this part of the footpath. She worries that he would be gone when she gets back because this is where he said he didn’t love her and never had and there is no chance he wasn’t instantly aware of that too. And if he is made to stand there by himself for however long it takes her to get changed, he might decide it isn’t what he wants to do – eat fried eggs with someone who would ask him a question like that. And if he waited for her, it would only be to say, ‘Do you know what, I’m pretty tired. I should let you go.’
She doesn’t want to be let go. People letting her go has become a theme. For once, she would like to be detained. That is why when they arrive at the café and he takes a long, long time over the menu, she isn’t annoyed. Eventually it will annoy her so much that one day she will say, ‘For fuck’s sake, he’ll have the steak,’ and actually grab his menu off him and hand it to the waiter who will look embarrassed for both of them because he mentioned, as they were sitting down, that it was their wedding anniversary. But that is a long time away. Now she is happy at how long it takes him to decide, then happier when he says, ‘I think I will have the omelette,’ and the waitress who’s been sniffing and shifting her weight from foot to foot says, ‘Just to let you know, the omelette takes fifteen minutes,’ and he will say, ‘Does it? Okay,’ and look back at the menu as though he should probably choose something else but she tells him she’s not in a rush, to which he says, ‘Really, okay,’ and to the waitress, ‘I will have the omelette in that case.’ And although omelettes are disgusting, she orders the omelette too because otherwise her meal will arrive way before his and it will be awkward, as if just the sitting down part wasn’t awkward enough, the first time they have been like this together, just the two of them on opposite sides of a small table. That is why as soon as they sat down, she had said, ‘This feels like a date,’ and they had both laughed self-consciously and were glad that the waitress came over then and asked them if they wanted the table wiped.
*
I ate all of the toast and the edges of the omelette and drank too much coffee before Patrick said he probably did need to go. We walked back and reaching the house, he stopped and put his hands in his pockets, the way he had the last time.
‘What?’
‘No, its just, you probably don’t remember –’
‘I do.’
He said, ah. ‘Okay, well, I should have apologised.’
I said it was my fault. ‘What were you supposed to say?’
‘I don’t know, but the way I said it. I upset you and I was sorry. I came back to tell you that, a few days later, but you were already in Paris. So, anyway, if it’s not too late, I’m sorry I made you cry.’
I said, ‘It wasn’t you. I thought so, at the time, but it was just Jonathan, I was so humiliated and that’s why I was so rude to you. So I’m sorry as well. And sorry if you smell like fat.’
We both smelled our sleeves. Patrick said wow. ‘Anyway –’ he got out his keys ‘– you probably need to go to sleep.’ He unlocked the car and thanked me for the breakfast he had paid for. It was ten o’clock in the morning. I said, ‘Goodnight Patrick,’ and watched him get in and drive away, standing there by myself, in my bridesmaid’s dress and my uncle’s jacket.
16
PATRICK TEXTED ME. It was still the day after Ingrid’s wedding, the afternoon.
‘Do you like Woody Allen movies?’
‘No. Nobody does.’
‘Do you want to see one with me tonight?’
‘Yes.’
He said he would pick me up at 7.10ish. ‘Do you want to know which one?’
I said, ‘They are all the same one. I will come outside at 7.09ish.’
There was a bar at the cinema. The film started but we never went in. At midnight, a man with a mop said sorry guys.
*
I had just started a job at a small publishing house that specialised in war histories written by the man who owned it. He was old and did not believe in computers or women coming to work in trousers. There were four of us in the office, all women, similar in age and appearance. The only thing he required us to do was bring him a cup of tea at eleven-thirty and shut the door on the way out.
We took turns. Once, on mine, I asked him if I could show
him my father’s poems. I said he’d been called a male Sylvia Plath. The owner said, ‘That sounds painful’ and ‘Please don’t let it slam,’ gesturing towards the door.
Spring, then summer and we gave up the pretence of working and began spending our days on the roof, lying in the sun, reading magazines, with our skirts rolled to the tops of our thighs and eventually off altogether, as well as our tops. Patrick’s hospital was visible from up there and such a short distance away that the sound of ambulance sirens carried across the rooftops and the clump of green that was Russell Square.
That is where we saw each other, coincidentally the first time, both of us on our way to the Tube. Then by arrangement, sometimes, then every day. Before work, when the park was empty and the air was still cold, at lunchtime when it was hot and crowded and strewn with rubbish, after work, sitting on a bench until there was no daylight left and no more office workers cutting through the park on their way home and no more tourists standing in their way and the man finished with his rubbish sweeper and it was just us again. Then at some point he would say, ‘I should walk you to the Tube. It’s late and presumably you’ve got to be in at the crack of nine-thirty.’
Sometimes he was late and so sorry although I never minded waiting. Sometimes he was wearing his hospital outfit and his junior doctor trainers, which I made fun of to cover how desperately endearing I found them, with their puffy soles and, I said, jazzy purple bits.
Once, a lunchtime, Patrick put his hand out to take the sandwich I had brought him and we both saw there was something that looked like blood on the inside of his forearm. He apologised and went to a drinking fountain to wash it off and apologised again as he sat down.
I said it must be strange to have a job where people around you are dying. ‘Not of boredom, as in my case. What’s the worst thing about it? The children?’
He said, ‘The mothers.’
I picked up my coffee, embarrassed just then by the intensity of his job, against the stupidity of mine. I said, ‘Anyway, do you want to know the worst things about my job?’
Patrick said he felt like he already knew them all. ‘Unless there are some new ones from today.’
‘Ask me something else then.’
He had been about to eat but put his sandwich back in the box and the box down on the bench. ‘What was the worst thing about Jonathan?’
I covered my mouth because I had just tipped coffee into it and I was shocked, then laughing and unable to swallow. Patrick handed me a serviette and waited for me to answer.
I said the stupid things first: his wet-looking hair, the way he dressed. That he never waited until I was out of the car before he started walking away, that he wasn’t sure what his cleaning lady’s name was even though she had worked for him for seven years. I told him about the room in Jonathan’s apartment that had nothing in it except a drum kit that faced a mirrored wall. And then I took the lid off my cup and said, the worst thing is that I thought he was funny because he made everything sound like a joke. ‘But he meant everything he said, at the time. Then he would change his mind and mean the opposite, as absolutely. He said I was beautiful and clever, then insane and I believed all of it.’ I stared into my cup. I wished I had stopped at the mirrored wall.
Patrick rubbed underneath his chin. ‘Probably, the worst thing to me was the tan.’
I laughed and looked at him smiling at me and then not as much when he said, ‘And being there when he proposed to you.’ A feeling, like fizzing, moved up the back of my neck. ‘Seeing you say yes and not being able to stop it.’ The fizzing spread out, across my shoulders, down my arms, upwards into my hair.
My phone rang. I had not managed to say anything. Patrick said don’t worry and told me to answer it.
It was Ingrid. She said she was in a disabled loo in Starbucks, in Hammersmith, and she was pregnant. She had just done a test.
Because she was talking so loudly, Patrick heard and did a thumbs-up, then pointed to his watch and stood up, simulating walking back to work and texting me later. I mimed him taking our rubbish to the bin but said goodbye out loud.
Ingrid asked me who I was talking to.
‘Patrick.’
‘What? Why are you with Patrick?’
I said, ‘Something weird is happening. But, you’re pregnant. I am so excited. Do you know who the father is?’
I let her talk about it for as long as I could, about the baby, morning sickness, names, then said, ‘I’m so sorry, I have to get back to the office. I’ve got so much work to invent.’
Ingrid said okay. ‘Don’t get stuck there. Burning the five p.m. candle on a Friday.’
I was so happy for her and did not know how I was going to survive it.
*
I didn’t want to see anyone the next day. I was supposed to go to a thing with Patrick. He had already paid for the tickets. In the morning he texted me and I said I couldn’t go and, because he said okay and didn’t make me feel guilty, I texted back and said I actually could go.
It was an exhibition at the Tate, of works by a photographer who only seemed to photograph himself, in his own bathroom. Patrick became despondent as we entered the third room of it. We were both looking at a picture of the artist standing in his bath, wearing an undershirt and nothing else.
I said, ‘I don’t know much about art but I know I would rather be at the gift shop.’
Patrick said I’m really sorry. ‘Someone at work said it was amazing. I thought it sounded like your kind of thing.’
I put my hand on his arm and kept it there. ‘Patrick, my only thing is sitting, drinking tea or something else and talking, or even better, not talking. That is the only thing I ever want to do.’
He said good, okay, noted. ‘I think there is a café here. On the top floor.’
*
In the lift, he said, ‘You must be excited about Ingrid.’ I told him I was and felt glad that the doors were opening. We sat at a table by the window, sometimes looking at the river and sometimes at each other, and drank tea or something else, talking for a long time about other things than Ingrid being pregnant. Patrick, about being an only child and how much he used to envy Oliver for having a brother, then his memory of meeting me and Ingrid for the first time, how inscrutable our relationship had been to him, for years afterwards. He said, until then, he hadn’t known it was possible for two separate people to be that connected. From looking alike and talking alike and, in his memory, never being apart, it felt like there was a sort of force field around us, impenetrable to other people. Were there matching sweatshirts at one point, with something weird written on the front?
I told him there was – I still had mine but now, ‘nivers’ and a spray of sticky white bits was the only thing left across the chest. He said he remembered me having it on every single time he ever came to Goldhawk Road in the months I lived there.
Ingrid and I were aware of the force field, I said, and it felt like it still existed sometimes but I knew it wouldn’t be the same once she was a mother and I wasn’t. ‘It’s why I’m not overburdened with female friends, because they all have children now and –’ I just said well and moved the sugar.
‘But it will evolve, don’t you think, once you do too.’
‘I don’t want children.’ I was suddenly thinking about Jonathan, front-running it, and I did not hear Patrick’s reply at the time; only later that night, replaying the conversation while I lay awake. He hadn’t asked why not. Only said, ‘That’s interesting. I’ve always imagined myself having children. But I guess just in the way everyone does.’
*
It had become Saturday night by the time we emerged from the gallery, and there was nowhere I wanted to go less than home. My parents had established some sort of salon and as she was in charge of the guest list, artists less important than my mother and writers more successful than my father would be packed into the living room, draining bottles of supermarket Prosecco and waiting for turns to talk about themselves. Because I couldn�
�t say where I did want to go when Patrick asked me, we crossed over the river and started walking along the Embankment until it became so crowded we kept being forced apart by the shoals of people coming the other way.
I could see Patrick was annoyed by the over and over of it – having to separate, having to find each other again a second later. For me it was so many tiny bursts, a salvo, of the Thank God feeling, which was why I wanted to keep walking. Finally, as a couple unready to give up their dream of rollerblading hand in hand down the Thames came towards us, he got my hand and pulled me to one side. He said, ‘Martha, we need an objective. I am worried we’re risking our lives only to end up at a Pizza Express that will make you sad if it’s empty and anxious if it’s full.’ I did not know how he knew that about me. ‘Can we go back to your house?’ He clarified – he meant, could he come with me on the Tube to Goldhawk Road in a protective capacity and leave me at the front door.
I thought about it, then said, ‘Do you know what’s funny? I’ve known you for however long, fifty years, and I’ve never been to your house.’
When Patrick pulled me out of their way, it had been so that my back was against the plinth of a statue and when the rollerbladers turned around and came back, uncoupled and both out of control, he was forced to step in so that we were face to face and close enough that breathing out, our bodies were barely separate. I wondered if Patrick was aware of it too, at all or as powerfully as I was, before he said, ‘This way, then,’ and led off in the direction of his flat.
*
Patrick promised me it was usually much tidier than this as he opened the door, then stood aside so I could go in first. It was on the third floor of a Victorian mansion block in Clapham, on a corner of the building so the living room overlooked a park from tall, perpendicular windows. He bought it after he graduated and lived there with a flatmate called Heather who was also a doctor. A mug on the arm of the sofa seemed to represent the total mess Patrick was talking about. Because it had lipstick on the rim, I assumed Heather was the sloven.
