Life After Lunch

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘This is where I come to learn my lines,’ said Richard.

  ‘It’s perfect.’

  ‘Sit down, do.’ Richard indicated a rustic seat near the jetty. ‘Unfortunately we suffer rather from the yob element at this time of year, but then who doesn’t?’

  ‘What do they do?’

  ‘They hire rowing boats from outside the pub, and then come down here and hold impromptu orgies under the jetty.’

  ‘Orgies?’

  ‘Drink, drugs …’ sighed Richard, with an actorly wave of the hand to indicate that there was more, much more, but he would spare me.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You should see what they leave behind. Even the ducks won’t touch it.’

  ‘That’s horrid.’

  ‘Pretty typical of today’s young, I’m afraid.’

  We sat down at either end of the bench. I liked Richard, but he was of another age. I always felt that with him a ‘ dear lady’ was waiting in the wings for the least opportunity, and that only my familiarity kept it in its place. He had been stunningly handsome in his prime but was now rather frail and getting smaller. For the party he was wearing a well-pressed cream suit, with braces, a light blue shirt with a Savage Club tie, and moccasins.

  ‘How’s the television show going?’ I asked.

  ‘We’ve recorded two episodes, thank you for asking, my dear.’

  ‘And are you enjoying it?’

  ‘I do believe I am,’ he said, his mystification conveying a multiplicity of messages. ‘Not that it’s true acting by any standard that I would recognize.’

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘It’s just behaving for the lens.’

  ‘Isn’t that what you used to do in films?’

  ‘Look!’ said Richard, changing the subject. ‘Our dear swans!’

  The swans came gliding regally towards us, with two gauche cygnets in tow.

  ‘They mate for life, you know,’ Richard reminded me. ‘And they nest in the same place – just round the bend on our little island – provided, of course, they can escape the attentions of the yobbery.’

  We fed the swans out of a bag of dried flakes kept for the purpose in the boathouse. Then we walked slowly back to the party.

  ‘This is a lovely place,’ I said as the house came back into view. ‘And what you and Simon have done with it is astonishing. It’s hard to imagine anyone else living here.’

  ‘Thank you, what a nice thing to say. We do our best. I think that between us we do have a small talent for homemaking. And we’re awfully lucky, we have each other, and security. We’ll see our time out together here at Gracewell.’

  ‘Like the swans,’ I suggested.

  ‘Like the swans. And you, my dear.’ Richard touched my elbow. ‘And that engaging husband of yours.’

  Up on the terrace Glyn was with a group that included Susan. It was she who called out at my approach.

  ‘Where’ve you been with Richard? Has he been offering you madeira in the shrubbery?’

  ‘No, we walked down to the mere.’

  ‘Been there, done that,’ said Susan. ‘ I know this place inside out. When they decide to throw it open to the public I’m going to offer my services as a guide.’

  ‘What’s its history?’ Glyn asked.

  clue!’ said Susan. ‘Who cares? I’m going to invent the entire thing, complete with madness, murder and marital disharmony. And ghosts – plenty of spectral goings-on. I could have this house on the Heritage map in no time!’

  Confronted with my friend in full partygoing cry, I glanced at Glyn, but he and the other couple had drawn slightly apart during the ensuing laughter and were now talking amongst themselves. I was aware as always of the slight tension that existed when my husband and friend were in dose proximity. It was as if Glyn in particular knew that there were things said between Susan and me to which he was not privy and from which he deliberately chose to distance himself.

  ‘Now, come along, Laura,’ said Susan, drawing me slightly aside, ‘and tell me all about everything.’

  ‘Nothing to tell.’

  ‘Rubbish. Let’s go and get some strawberries.’

  She led the way indoors to the dining room, where huge china bowls full of homegrown strawberries were presided over by Pauline, the daughter of Simon and Richard’s cleaning lady.

  ‘Strawberries, ladies?’ asked Pauline. Although only sixteen and just emerged from GCSEs at the local comprehensive, she had quickly assimilated the house style.

  ‘Not for me,’ said Susan, ‘but my friend here will have them for both of us.’

  ‘And why not,’ said Pauline. ‘There we go.’

  ‘Aren’t you having any?’ I asked, taking delivery of a piled plateful, drowned in cream. ‘ You know me, I get over-excited at parties. Come through here.’

  Swinging a bottle of Simon’s white wine in one hand, she led the way into the next room, a library. At one end was a beautiful oak desk with a large globe standing on it. At the other was a wonderful leaded bay window with a cushioned windowseat, where Susan sat us both down.

  ‘The perfect spot for talking behind the fan,’ she said. ‘About your goings-on.’

  ‘Don’t you have any secrets this time?’ I asked.

  That’s for me to know and you to find out …’

  ‘You do!’

  ‘How could you tell?’

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Only kidding. The only thing I’ve embraced is chastity.’

  ‘It’s too late for that.’

  ‘Don’t be pedantic, you know what I mean – celibacy. It’s the new rock and roll, Laura. All the coolest people are doing it. Or rather not doing it.’

  ‘If you say so,’ I said doubtfully.

  ‘I do.’ As always, Susan had the ability to lend an air of chic to even the least propitious activity. ‘And anyway,’ she added with disarming candour, ‘it’s a case of needs must when the devil drives. And I’m going to Crete soon, so who knows what adventures await me?’ She took my empty dish from me and refilled my glass. ‘ Now, tell me – how are the stolen moments going?’

  Susan’s thirst for updates had the effect of making me see how little there was to report. The stolen moments, hot and humid though they were, were not ‘going’ as she put it, anywhere.

  ‘And don’t,’ she ordered, ‘say fine. I will not be fobbed off.’

  ‘I know. But there’s nothing to tell you. I go there, we have sex, we talk for a while, I leave.’

  ‘Don’t you ever go out?’

  ‘Too risky.’

  ‘No, but I mean – do it somewhere else? A hotel? A field of clover? Back of his car?’

  ‘I don’t even know if he has a car.’

  ‘Of course he does, everyone does.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  ‘But anyway, you don’t go out?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you in love with him? I asked you before but you never said.’

  ‘I didn’t know.’

  ‘And now?’

  I glanced anxiously towards the door. I was profoundly uncomfortable talking about Patrick with Glyn only a few yards away.

  ‘I still don’t.’

  ‘And Glyn still doesn’t know?’ I shook my head. ‘Don’t bet on it.’

  ‘I’m sure he doesn’t.’

  ‘He trusts you implicitly?’

  ‘It’s not even that – I don’t think such a thing would even cross his mind.’

  ‘Hm. The question is,’ said Susan, ‘how long can it go on for?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  As we went out again, through the dining-room and hall, I said, ‘I half-thought Henry might be playing here today.’

  She looked at me sharply. ‘Did you? No, we’ve none of us seen Henry for ages. He’s a dark horse.’

  ‘Susan was in good form,’ commented Glyn as I drove us home.

  ‘She always is.’

  ‘She’s your best friend.’ It was a statement uttere
d reflectively as though trying it on for size.

  ‘Certainly my oldest.’

  ‘It’s a funny expression, ‘‘best friend’’. I mean, is it a value judgement? Or is it a case of never mind the quality feel the width? Or does it just mean the person you can never ditch because they know too much about you?’

  I peered both ways at a T-junction before pulling out. ‘You don’t like her, do you?’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  I felt oddly comfortable with this conversation. It was honest but not crucially so. ‘It is. You’ve never liked her.’

  ‘Whatever gave you that idea?’

  ‘I sense it.’

  ‘That’s the last resort of the unfair accusation,’ said Glyn, laughing. ‘Like Ver saying you’ve got to have faith. I’m quite sure there’s nothing in my behaviour which has given you, or Susan, the smallest grounds for complaint.’

  ‘But you still don’t like her.’

  Glyn turned his face towards the open window and was silent for a moment. We were driving through a shimmering prairie of East Anglian arable land. There were no people, no animals, and precious little traffic. A troop of pylons bestrode the gently undulating fields. A smear of smoke rose from somewhere beyond the horizon.

  ‘Not that it matters,’ I said. I felt I’d hurt him. It was odd I should feel that way when the potential for a far greater injury ticked away in our lives.

  He was still looking out of the window when he replied, ‘Okay, you’re right in a way. I sense something – some female conspiracy.’

  ‘You’re jealous?’

  ‘Either that or it makes me nervous.’

  His intuition was spot-on. ‘Now, that is silly.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ He gave me an apologetic smile. ‘Typically insecure nineties male feeling threatened by female bonding.’

  ‘You’ve no need to be,’ I lied.

  The City Council had taken advantage of a fine Sunday in mid-July to tear up part of the westbound ring road. This hadn’t affected our outward journey but now I had to follow diversion signs. I found myself driving down Calcutta Road. Patrick, in jeans and a T-shirt, was standing halfway up his front steps talking to Josie from the basement. There were temporary lights at the far end and the traffic was slow-moving. I sat with my eyes glued to the car in front as we crawled by. Something even less clear than my peripheral vision told me that Patrick had seen me – us – and I couldn’t risk catching his eye.

  A horn blared. ‘Wakey-wakey,’ said Glyn. ‘They’re green.’

  When we got back I did something ridiculously bold. I had VAT returns to do, but instead I changed out of my smart things and into baggy shorts and loafers, and told Glyn I was going out.

  ‘Okay,’ he said. He was sitting in the garden with the Sunday papers. He barely looked up.

  ‘I thought I might go and take a look round the Sunday market,’ I explained.

  ‘Fine.’ He turned a page. ‘Good idea.’

  ‘I won’t be long.’

  ‘Be as long as you like.’

  ‘I’ll be back in a couple of hours, top whack.’

  ‘Have fun.’

  I seemed to be telling him far more than he wanted to know. I left the house as free as a bird, and mindful of the roadworks in Calcutta Road, got on my ancient pushbike and pedalled across town to see Patrick.

  It was the first time I’d arrived unannounced.

  ‘Are you alone?’ I asked.

  He looked around. ‘Seem to be. Come on in.’

  I went in and as soon as the door was closed I wound my arms round his neck and clamped my mouth to his. He made a little sound of amused surprise, which excited me. So he thought he’d got my number, did he? I began plucking and dragging at his clothes, I swarmed up him like a monkey so that he staggered back against the wall, and had to clutch my buttocks to take the weight from his neck and shoulders. Still grasping me, his fingers digging in, he pushed one hand between our bodies and undid his jeans, and then my shorts. When he lifted me on to him the pleasure was so intense it was a pain. I felt a gush of liquid – mine – as he pushed up my shirt and his T-shirt and rubbed my breasts against him. My legs, astride his large bulk, ached with pressure and tension, but I was in control. I wanted to surprise and even hurt him. His eyes were slitted and his mouth open. His head was nudging the ugly mirror on the wall. I wanted the mirror to fall, and smash, and Patrick’s knees to buckle so that he collapsed and cut himself. The more fierce and feral the beast, the greater its power.

  The mirror didn’t fall, but we slithered panting to the ground, taking two telephone directories from the nearby table with us. We were surrounded by an almost palpable stillness, intensified by the hammering of the pneumatic drill and the restless drone of log-jammed traffic outside. Peaches, tail aloft, emerged from the living-room, paused to inspect us, and floated away. The faint click of the cat-flap marked her displeasure.

  The phone rang. I expected Patrick to ignore it, but he raised an arm and felt for the receiver.

  ‘Hallo? Oh – hallo.’

  As his caller spoke I stood up and adjusted my clothing. With his customary piggishness Patrick sat there unabashed, receiver to ear, jeans and boxers round his ankles, I was swept by repugnance, and went into the other room and stood by the window that overlooked the street, trying to distance myself from him, and this house, and our recent behaviour. It was the next best thing to walking out, which I couldn’t do.

  The telephone conversation was brief, and the caller did most of the talking. At the end of it Patrick said, ‘Okay, see you.’ I heard the receiver go back, and in a moment he came in, buttoning his jeans.

  ‘I’m really glad you decided to drop in.’

  I couldn’t bring myself to answer.

  ‘You never fail to surprise me.’

  ‘I surprise myself,’ I said. He came across the room and I folded my arms to shut him out. It wasn’t as easy as that, because he perched on the windowsill in front of me, with his back to the road, and lit a cigarette. The first inhalation brought on a fit of coughing.

  ‘Loss of control is an excellent thing,’ he said while his eyes were still watering. There seemed no point in telling him that the desire to control was precisely what had driven me just now. I shrugged.

  ‘Oh yes,’ he went on. ‘Makes you feel smutty, though, doesn’t it? Makes you wish you hadn’t?’

  I didn’t answer.

  ‘Want a drink? I’ve got to go out in a minute, but there’s time for a beer.’

  ‘No. I’m going.’

  He followed me into the hall. The telephone directories still lay on the floor, the mirror was crooked and there was a slick of viscous moisture where we had lain.

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Patrick. ‘You come storming round here on a Sunday afternoon, jump me in my own front hall, and wreck the joint in the process.’ He opened the door. ‘You’re only after one thing.’

  As I cycled past the Corn Exchange I saw the poster for the show Roberto was in next weekend – Tango Americano. It took not just two, I thought, but a whole network of people to tango. Life was complex. It was like one of those ‘ magic eye’ posters, a dense and meaningless accumulation of detail that none the less contained a pattern. A pattern which, given the right angle and a relaxing of the mental muscles, it would be possible to see.

  That night I couldn’t sleep. The more I lay still, and closed my eyes, and tried to relax, the more the turmoil seethed in my head. I became quite rigid with the effort not to toss and turn. Glyn’s breathing was deep and even. I didn’t want to disturb him. He was going up to Manchester for a few days ‘ star-stalking’ as he called it, and Cy was picking him up at 5 a. m.

  At two-thirty I still hadn’t slept. In only ninety minutes the windows would turn grey and the first birds would send up a tentative reveille in the poplars of Alderswick Avenue. I was quite desperate, not just with the need to rest, but for oblivion. I didn’t want to keep thinking. I wanted to lay down my burden,
but like the Old Man of the Sea, once wilfully taken up it clung to me with ever more demanding weight.

  Suddenly Glyn slipped his arm around me, felt for my hand and linked his fingers with mine. It was a light touch without pressure, either actual or implied.

  ‘Laura …?’ His voice, though quiet, was distinct. I realized with a slight shock that he had been awake for ages.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right?’ He gave my hand a light squeeze.

  ‘Yes.’

  I felt something, no more than his breath, really, as he kissed the back of my hair.

  ‘You mustn’t worry,’ he said.

  I didn’t answer, for fear of incriminating myself, even by implication. My throat and neck strained with unshed tears.

  ‘You know what Verity would say, don’t you?’

  Still I was silent. His thumb brushed the back of my hand.

  ‘All will be well,’ he said.

  Chapter Twelve

  There had never been any danger of Roberto’s being a thorn in Becca’s side, not because he didn’t love either her (at the time) or Amos, but because he was a child himself. He was a sweet, lovely young man with all the charm in the world and a rather feminine nature. Unlike Liam, part-time fatherhood suited him perfectly, and following their eighteen-month fling he and Becca had drifted apart without acrimony. I wasn’t normally in the habit of making excuses for people, but even I could see that Roberto, cooped up with domestic responsibilities, would have gone into a decline. He lacked Becca’s mental toughness, her inspired opportunism and her ability to get her own way in her own way.

  Amos, as he’d got older, picked up on his mother’s attitude to Roberto, which was one of light-hearted fondness. He took his father as he found him. Roberto’s dark eyes often filled with tears, but whether of joy or sadness they were generally short-lived: his was a small range of emotion, intensely expressed. His goals were simple and short-term – some spending money in his pocket, an opportunity to dance, and an attractive woman upon whom to lavish his romantic attentions. In his professional life, Roberto had undoubted talent, but he needed to be told what to do. He would never be a star, but he was always the one you looked at in the chorus.

  While at the Corn Exchange the company of Tango Americano was being put up at a small hotel on the ring road, but when not on tour Roberto occupied old-fashioned digs in West Hampstead, complete with a strict and motherly landlady and shared bathroom. We were sure this arrangement suited him down to the ground. It didn’t surprise us to learn from Becca that he called the landlady ‘Mama’.