Bookends

by Jane Green

  But by the end of the day I thought he was, quite simply, the most incredible man I had ever met. We all did. Even though none of us had actually met him at that stage. That came later. Afterwards. At the drinks party where he singled me out, came over to talk to me. Looked deep into my eyes and told me I had interesting ideas. And all of a sudden the colours in the room became far brighter, the lines sharper, and I remember thinking that perhaps this was what it was like to fall in love.

  Eventually we sat at a table in the corner, with other people who had paid fortunes to come on this course, and Martin fascinated all of us with his stories, his confidence, his charm. But I knew I was special. I knew that there was some sort of link between the two of us, something magical, something that would lead to more.

  Our table-fellows gradually started to leave. ‘Got an early start tomorrow,’ they’d say with a wink at Martin, who would laugh politely. Each time he heard it. And eventually it was just the two of us, and Martin turned to me and tugged the elastic band out of my hair, which actually hurt terribly, but I winced in silence because I was aware it was supposed to be a romantic gesture.

  ‘You have beautiful hair,’ he said to me, while I blushed furiously and tried to think of something to say.

  ‘It’s a frizzy mess,’ I ended up muttering, instantly regretting spoiling the mood.

  ‘No, no,’ Martin murmured, ‘it’s quite lovely. Would you like to come up for a drink? It’s rather noisy down here, don’t you think? And I have a wonderful Scotch upstairs.’

  Of course I knew that whisky meant sex, but I was somehow mesmerized by him, by the fact that the man to whom everyone in the room wanted to talk was giving me his undivided attention, and I meekly followed him upstairs.

  We spent the next three nights together. I would sit in the front row during his lectures and feel a glow of warmth each time he looked at me, aware that the rumours had already started to circulate, but not caring. Only caring that Martin would look at me again by the time I counted to twelve, because that would mean he was going to fall in love with me. Even I wasn’t naïve enough to believe he might love me already.

  I like to think that if I had met Martin with the wisdom and cynicism of my current thirty-one years, instead of the romanticism and dreams of twenty-four, there are two things that would have been different.

  The first is that I would never have slept with him in the first place, because now I know that these course lecturers regularly look for someone as I was then: a young shy girl, preferably rather plain, who would be flattered and impressed with their false charm and attention.

  The second certainty is that when the relationship continued after the four-day course, I would have known that those times when he said he couldn’t see me because he was working, those nights when he’d rush out of bed after sex and leave, the fact that he never gave me his telephone number, only a pager, meant only one thing.

  Of course I should have known he was married. But you see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear. I didn’t know better. I was so flattered, so swept up by someone, anyone, telling me I was beautiful, I didn’t stop to think about anything else.

  Si knew. Although he didn’t say anything at the time. He once tentatively asked me if I thought he might be married, and I was so furious with him he never brought it up again. Until I knew for certain. At which point Si sniffed and said, ‘I told you so.’

  ‘I hate it when people say I told you so,’ I said.

  ‘I know. I’m sorry. But I told you so.’

  And so it went on.

  The whole Martin Malarkey (Si’s expression, not mine) lasted two years. Two years that gradually wore me down until there was almost nothing left. Two years that shattered my dreams of romance and everlasting love. Two years that taught me never to open myself up again for fear of getting hurt.

  In fact the only good thing to come out of it was the weight loss. Even after he confessed he was married, I continued to believe that he loved her but wasn’t in love with her. I believed that she had happily consented to his wishes to sleep in the spare room and that they hadn’t had sex for two years. I believed that the only reason he was staying was because of the children, but as soon as they started school he would leave.

  I believed this until I found out she was pregnant again. Don’t ask me how I found out – a long and complicated story – but I did, and Martin denied it until he could see I wasn’t buying the lies any more, and then it was over.

  So, as I was saying, the weight loss. I couldn’t eat. Quite literally. Could. Not. Eat. For weeks.

  ‘You know you’re becoming a lollipop,’ Si would say. ‘You have this huge hair and a little sticky body. Please eat this,’ he’d beg, proffering home-made coconut pie with chocolate sauce, or treacle tart, or salmon fishcakes. ‘We’re worried about you.’

  Josh and Lucy would invite me over for dinner and exchange concerned glances when they thought I wasn’t looking, too busy sighing and poking at pastry with my fork.

  Finally Si dragged me up to Bond Street. ‘We might as well take advantage of the fact that you now have hipbones,’ he sighed, pulling me into Ralph Lauren.

  ‘But I’ll never wear this,’ I kept hissing at him, although I had to admit, if I were into clothes and had unlimited finances, I probably would have bought them.

  Eventually we settled on Fenwick, much to Si’s horror, and I bought a couple of size 10 trousers and a tight sweater, just to keep him happy, although I was slightly smug about not having to buy a size 14 for the first time in years.

  ‘You’re a woman,’ Si said in disgust, shaking his head in amazement. ‘You must understand the concept of retail therapy.’

  I wore the trousers for a while, until I started becoming happy again, and soon I was back to my normal size and the trousers were given to my secretary. And since then I haven’t really been involved with anyone.

  There have been a few, but they’ve always been too short. Or too tall. Too handsome. Not handsome enough. Too young. Too old. Too rich. Too poor. Quite frankly these days I prefer a good book.

  ‘What about Brad?’ Si asked me one day.

  ‘Brad who?’ We were sitting at a café in West Hampstead, with Josh and Lucy, and a pile of the Sunday papers. It’s become a bit of a tradition with us now. One o’clock at Dominique’s, every Sunday, for coffee, croissants, scrambled eggs and papers.

  We were all engrossed. I was stuck into the Sunday Times News Review, Josh had the Business section, and Lucy was reading Style. Si had the magazine.

  ‘Brad who? Brad who?’ he said indignantly. ‘There is only one Brad,’ he finally exclaimed, adding, ‘Brad Pitt. That’s who.’ Si held up a picture of said man caught in a paparazzi snap coming out of a restaurant.

  ‘What about him?’ Lucy asked.

  ‘What about him for Cath?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said slowly, as if talking to a child. ‘Because Brad Pitt would dump Jennifer Aniston for a short, plain, mousy…’

  ‘You’re almost blonde,’ Si interrupted. ‘And he loves blondes! Remember Gwynnie.’

  Josh put down his paper and looked at Si, shaking his head. ‘Si, what on earth are we talking about? What is this conversation? Have you gone mad?’

  ‘No. I just meant that Cath finds fault with every man who even goes near her, and he’s completely perfect, but she’d probably find something wrong with him too. Wouldn’t you?’ He looked at me.

  ‘’Course,’ I said, examining the picture before exclaiming very seriously, ‘His hair’s too greasy.’

  Josh and Lucy gave up introducing me to their friends a long time ago, but men never seemed to be much of a priority after Martin.

  Not that I relished spending the rest of my life by myself, but I wasn’t, not with Si, not with Josh and Lucy.

  Damn. Si will be here in fifteen minutes and the place looks like a tip. As you would expect, Si’s flat, despite being in the less than salubrious area of Kilburn, is immaculate. Not par
ticularly smart, I grant you, but only because Si’s work is so irregular he can’t afford to re-create the room sets he drools over in Wallpaper magazine.

  Mine, on the other hand, is a mess. The flat itself is in a mansion block, and therefore lovely and large, but interiors have never been quite my thing, and the fact that most of the furniture was passed on by elderly relatives or well-meaning friends has never particularly bothered me.

  It bothers Si, though. Every time he comes over he sits on the sofa, growing more and more fidgety, before getting up and re-arranging. He pulls books off the bookshelf and arranges them in neat little piles on the coffee table, together with whatever bowls he can find.

  He plumps up cushions and rummages around in my wardrobe for old scarves, which he drapes over furniture. Si’s a big believer in draping, although he claims he hates it and is resorting to desperate measures to hide the ‘hideous pieces of crap’. He collects mugs that are gathering mould, and, shooting me filthy looks, takes them into the kitchen, stands them in the sink and covers them in hot, soapy water.

  He has been known to get the vacuum out of the cupboard and do the entire flat, but, as he says, hoovering has never been his favourite job. Give him a pair of rubber gloves and a can of Pledge, however, and he is as happy as anything.

  I run around the living room, gathering papers, videos, books, and stack them in a precarious pile next to the sofa, well out of Si’s view. The mugs are literally thrown into the sink, and then I remember the bed and rush in to shake out the duvet.

  ‘Only real sluts don’t make their bed,’ Si said one day, after which point I have tried to remember to make it. At least when he’s coming over.

  At seven thirty on the dot the doorbell rings. I haven’t had time for a bath, and I run to the door tugging a cream cardigan over my head because I can’t be bothered to undo the buttons.

  ‘Are my eyes deceiving me? Could that be… cream?’ says Si. ‘That’s adventurous. What happened to basic black? I don’t think I’ve seen you in a colour for years.’

  ‘It’s not a colour,’ I say grumpily. ‘It’s cream. Anyway, would you like to come in for two seconds to see how tidy I am?’

  Si pops his head round the living room door and marches straight over to the side of the sofa. The bit that’s supposed to be hidden from view. One tap of his toe and the pile is once again all over the floor.

  ‘Cath, my love, did you think my instincts would have failed me? Did you think, perhaps, that they had gone absent without leave? Or perhaps you think I’m rather stupid…’

  ‘All right, all right. Sorry. But you have to admit it looks okay.’

  ‘No,’ Si says slowly. ‘Although relatively speaking I suppose I’ll have to concede it does.’ He checks his watch. ‘Josh said quarter to. Shall we wander over?’

  I nod and grab my coat, turning to see Si watching me.

  ‘Sweets,’ he says. ‘You really should make more of an effort. Put on just a tiny bit of make-up on this gorgeous spring evening. What if Mr Perfect turns up?’

  ‘I don’t need Mr Perfect,’ I say, closing the door behind us and tucking my arm cosily into Si’s. ‘I already have you.’

  Chapter four

  Josh comes to the door with a tea-towel in one hand and Max in the other, looking, it has to be said, extremely cute in his little striped pyjamas. That is if you didn’t know better.

  Even Josh looks rather cute, come to that, with his dirty blond hair mussed up, his shirt sleeves rolled up to show off rather strong and sexy tanned forearms (well, they would be if they didn’t belong to Josh).

  It’s funny how I’ve never thought of Josh in that way. Maybe it’s just that he’s too much of an older brother to me now, or maybe it’s because I don’t believe he’s got any sex appeal, but I have never, could never, think of Josh as anything other than a friend.

  And yet, looking at him now, purely objectively, he’s a good-looking man. He is the sort of man who grows into his looks, who is just now, at thirty-two, starting to look seriously handsome in a boy-next-door kind of way. The deep laughter lines and creases at the corners of his eyes always seemed slightly incongruous in his twenties, but now they suit him, make him look worldly, as if he’s been around the block a few times, which God knows he needed, because Josh was, still is, the straightest of all of us.

  I remember Si and I going through our spliff phase just after university. Si would roll these tiny, tight little joints, and I would try to imitate them, ending up with Super Plus Tampons. We’d sit there, Si and I, rolling around on the floor and screaming with laughter, while Josh puffed away awkwardly, looking slightly perturbed that it wasn’t having the same effect.

  ‘No, no, Josh!’ Si would say, when the pair of us had recovered enough to actually breathe. ‘You have to inhale,’ and that would set us off again.

  His only vice, if you can even dare to call it that, has been drink. First it was pints of Snakebite at university with the rugby team, then pints of lager with the City boys, and now it’s good bottles of claret with dinner.

  ‘Look!’ Josh says to Max, after rolling his eyes at me briefly. ‘Aunty Cath and Uncle Si! Do you want to give Aunty Cath a cuddle?’ he says brightly, swiftly passing Max to me.

  ‘No!’ wails Max, turning back to Josh with a look of sheer panic on his face. ‘I want Daddy!’

  ‘Come to Uncle Si,’ says Si soothingly, as he effortlessly lifts Max up and starts making him laugh immediately by pulling funny faces. ‘Shall we go upstairs and find Tinky Winky?’

  Max nods his head vigorously, as Si disappears up the stairs, concentrating hard on Max, who is now chatting away merrily. Josh sighs and closes the door, wiping his forehead with the tea-towel, leaving a big splodge of what could be cream, or could be something that’s not worth thinking about, on the left side of his face.

  ‘Face,’ I say, gesturing to the cream, as Josh realizes and wipes it away.

  ‘And it’s lovely to see you too,’ he says, leaning down and giving me a hug. ‘Lucy’s in the kitchen and I’m supposed to be helping her, but Max has been a bugger today.’

  ‘Kids, eh?’ I sigh. ‘Who’d have ’em?’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ Josh says, but, tired as he looks tonight, I know that he adores Max, that although he might pretend to be unhappy about having to take Max out of Lucy’s hair, he secretly loves it. Josh loves the fact that he can be a little boy again, can play Cowboys and Indians, teach Max the basic rules about being a man.

  Josh and Lucy live in a terraced Victorian house in a narrow street. It looks like nothing from the outside, but is, basically, a Tardis house, i.e., it looks tiny, but once you’re in, it’s enormous.

  It is always messy, always noisy, and most of the activity is focused around the large kitchen at the rear, which wasn’t a large kitchen when they moved in two years ago, but, thanks to a smart conservatory extension, is now large enough for a huge dining table that usually has at least three people sitting round it, drinking coffee.

  Tonight there is a man I don’t recognize sitting there, strange only because I know most of Josh and Lucy’s friends, and because I thought it was just going to be the four of us tonight.

  Lucy has her back to us, chatting away, finishing an anecdote about work; she trained as an illustrator but seems to have done less and less since having Max. When she does have free time, she seems to spend it doing other things – displacement activity, Si always says. Her latest venture is a course in counselling, and I can hear, from the conversation, that the other person sitting at the table is from the course as well.

  Lucy stops mid-sentence as she hears my footsteps. Her face lights up as she puts down the lethal-looking knife, and she gives me a huge hug, careful to keep her hands, currently covered with avocado, off my clothes.

  Lucy is one of those people whose face always shines, despite not wearing any make-up. She is always radiant, sickeningly healthy-looking, always smiling, and is the best possible person to talk to if you ever hav
e problems.

  I love the fact that this is who Josh chose to marry. For a while Si and I were slightly terrified he was going to pop the question to one of an endless stream of identikit girls with streaky blonde hair, braying laughs and a lack of brain cells, but then he went and surprised us by falling madly in love with Lucy. Lucy, with her ruddy cheeks and raucous laugh, with her rounded figure in faded dungarees, with her winks as she ruffled Josh’s hair and told him, repeatedly, that she was built for comfort and not for speed. Lucy, whose maternal instincts were such they were almost oozing out of every pore, who gave birth to Max five months after their wedding.

  I love hearing the story of how they met. It gives me hope. Josh hadn’t been working in the City long, when he met Lucy. He was, at the time, desperate to impress, and would spend his nights socializing with City boys who were very definitely not my type.

  Josh tried to bring Si and I along a couple of times. I think he thought that if there were enough people going down to the pub, Si and I would just blend in. But of course we didn’t. I had nothing in common with the gaggle of silly little girls that hung on to their every word, and Si had even less with the boozy, macho traders who’d relax in their spare time by having drinking competitions and seeing who could ‘pull the best bird’.

  A group of them decided to go off to France on a skiing trip one Christmas. They booked a chalet, and Josh came over one night and sat on my sofa, sighing over and over as he debated whether to bring his latest conquest.

  ‘I do really like Venetia,’ he sighed. ‘I just know she’s not The One, and I don’t know what to do. She’s already expecting to come, talking about going out to buy a new set of salopettes, but I’m worried she’ll spoil the fun.’

  It turned out he meant that Venetia would curl up on his lap every evening, gazing up at him with big blue eyes, taking him by the hand and leading him to bed at nine o’clock, thus preventing him from debauched nights with the boys. Venetia, he said, was gorgeous. She was the perfect trophy girlfriend, and all his mates were green with envy.