Life After Lunch

by Sarah Harrison

  It was hard to imagine Roberto growing old, and in fact we tried not to – it was almost too sad. Glyn had often painted a picture of what happened to mediocre or unsuccessful entertainers when they stopped living on hope and settled into the realization that they had failed, and that it – whatever it was – was never going to happen. A few could shrug and walk off in another direction. But most were maimed in some way by the disappointment and the frustration. A professional dancer’s life was cruelly short, and Roberto showed no interest in or aptitude for choreography. So perhaps it was a good thing that he did not seem ambitious. When I suggested, entre nous, that he might teach, Glyn simply asked, ‘Can you see him keeping order?’

  Roberto and Becca came round on Sunday morning to pick up the children. Verity was cooking one of her famous post – communion brunches in the kitchen. As with clothes, so with food – Verity’s vegetarianism didn’t prevent her cooking a mean crispy rasher. The siren-scent of frying had brought even Josh downstairs. It was one of those rare occasions when almost all the immediate family was present – Liam being the exception.

  ‘Good morning, Laura,’ said Roberto in his comic-opera accent, kissing me three times on alternate cheeks. ‘ Thank you for your wonderful hospitality.’

  ‘I haven’t done anything,’ I said.

  ‘Was my Amos a good boy?’

  ‘A very good boy. He always is.’

  ‘Just like his father,’ said Becca.

  As they went through into the kitchen I looked at Roberto’s taut dancer’s backside in fawn chinos and wondered whether he and my daughter had slept together last night. From time to time these days I suffered from a compulsive desire to unburden myself to Becca. She more than anyone in the family was most likely to understand and least likely to judge. Perhaps, I speculated wildly, we could become pals, like those mothers and grown-up daughters who featured in the Sunday newspapers … But something always, thank God, stopped me.

  Roberto picked up Amos and embraced him extravagantly, murmuring endearments. He suffered no embarrassment about his ambiguous position in our family. I was glad about this, but in my mind’s eye I couldn’t help seeing Susan, one eyebrow cocked, an expression of amused rebuke on her face, and wondered if we had done right.

  Verity put an assortment of plates down on the kitchen table and began distributing rashers, chipolatas, mushrooms, fried bread and the first installment of fried eggs.

  ‘Nice one, Ver,’ said Josh. ‘Mind if I take mine upstairs?’

  Glyn was leaning against the sink. ‘Don’t forget to bring the plate down.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Josh clapped his hand to his brow. ‘ I was thinking of putting it with all the others that are under the bed ankle-deep in penicillin.’

  ‘How do you like your egg, Roberto?’ asked Verity.

  ‘As it comes,’ said Becca briskly. ‘ He’s lucky to get one at all.’ She picked up a rasher, and passed it rapidly from hand to hand as she went out on to the patio and sat down in a deckchair with her face to the sun. Sinead followed and cast herself down on her mother like a rag doll.

  ‘The man of the household must come first,’ said Roberto gallantly, with an expansive gesture.

  Glyn waved aside the suggestion. ‘Pass. It’s nearly lunchtime according to my clock.’

  ‘How’s the show going?’ I asked.

  Roberto sat down at the table with Amos on one knee. ‘Is brilliant.’

  ‘It is actually,’ said Becca from outside. ‘Incredibly sexy.’

  ‘From the bordellos of Buenos Aires to the town halls of England,’ mused Glyn. ‘All those sleazy old tarts, pimps and panderers must be spinning in their paupers’ graves.’

  ‘Are there any tickets left, Roberto?’

  ‘Not many, but if you and Mr Lewis want to go it can be arranged. I shall arrange it. One or two are always held back for the cast.’

  ‘There are none on the door, I can tell you,’ said Verity. ‘ We’re going tonight and we got almost the last ones in the house.’

  ‘We?’ enquired Glyn.

  ‘Me and Jasper.’

  I was so determined not to be betrayed by even a flicker of surprise or amusement that all I said was: ‘And are they decent ones or right behind a pillar?’

  ‘One’s restricted view but we’re going to swap at half-time.’

  ‘Verity, you must come round and have a drink with me afterwards,’ said Roberto. ‘And bring your boyfriend with you.’

  Verity’s cheek was extremely pink where her hair was hooked back, but that might have been the result of cooking brunch. Roberto, oblivious to the undercurrent, allowed Amos to gloop ketchup on to the side of his plate. I glanced out at Becca but her eyes were closed. Her hand on Sinead’s back patted out the rhythm of a tune in her head.

  ‘Well, I think we ought to go,’ said Glyn. The phone began to ring and as he went out to the hall he added, ‘Can you sort it for us, Roberto?’

  A moment later I heard him say, ‘Yes, sure, I’ll get her,’ and I was swept by the terrible surmise that it might be Patrick on the line.

  It was Bunny.

  ‘Laura – I did appreciate your letter.’

  ‘That’s okay, the least I can do.’

  ‘I’m feeling rather better, actually.’

  ‘I’m so pleased.’

  ‘I’ve taken to heart what you said.’

  I tried to remember exactly what it was I had said. ‘Good.’

  ‘I’ve begun losing weight and I’m not going to allow George’s sordid goings-on to prevent me living my life.’

  ‘That’s the spirit.’

  ‘I’ve spoken to the lawyers and I’m going to keep this flat while I look for something else, and it’s the very least George can do. What he does with the house is his own affair – if that’s not an unfortunate phrase.’

  ‘No, no. Good idea. So you are definitely going ahead with the divorce then?’

  ‘No question. It’s underway.’ She paused as if inviting comment, but I could think of nothing to say. ‘And don’t be disapproving, Laura, because there’s no other solution.’

  ‘I’m not disapproving.’

  ‘You think I should be magnanimous.’

  ‘Not should. Of course not, Bunny. But could.’

  ‘But I couldn’t!’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’ She sounded exasperated. If she only knew! But it wasn’t her fault that she didn’t.

  ‘It must be absolutely ghastly,’ I said. ‘I can’t begin to imagine what you’ve been going through.’

  ‘No, well … But that’s not what I meant. I meant that George and I were never in the least like you and Glyn.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘You two were made for each other. Yours is a real love match. It was never like that with us.’

  I looked over my shoulder towards the kitchen. Glyn was standing holding Sinead. She was nibbling a chipolata, occasionally offering him a bite. He wore a waistcoat handpainted with densely packed images of colourful parrots. It was his pride and joy, but he didn’t flinch as the greasy sausage missed its mark, fell, and was trapped snugly between him and his granddaughter. He even laughed as he prised it out.

  ‘Laura?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Oh, you’re still there, I thought I’d lost you. I just want to impress upon you that we were never a shining example of the married state. That old thing about the secret of success being constant separation is really what we were all about.’

  ‘Nothing the matter with that,’ I said. It was odd standing here in the hall, poised, as it were, between the soulless comfort of Bunny’s apartment in Harley Street and the lacerating complexities of life in Alderswick Avenue. It was even odder that Bunny should be treating me as a touchstone, and our marriage as a barometer of how marriages ought to be.

  ‘… I’m not kidding myself that something beautiful’s dying here,’ she continued in my ear. ‘And we don’t have children, so that one can�
�t be levelled against me.’

  ‘No, you’re quite right,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to be preachy. Good luck to you. Bun.’

  ‘Thanks, but you can wish me luck in person, because the other reason I rang is that a few of the Edelrats are getting together next week – we thought we’d go to the Gondola, for old times’ sake. Does that appeal?’

  ‘Very much, in principle. What day?’

  ‘Friday? School’s out then, isn’t it?’

  I was about to contradict, but realized she was alluding to the adult perception of a Friday, and not the academic year which, thank God, had another ten days to run. I got my diary and wrote down the date.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it.’

  In the late afternoon Jasper turned up. Glyn was mowing the grass and I was desultorily clipping edges in his wake. His appearance, with Verity, at the kitchen door was the perfect excuse to down tools.

  ‘Hi there,’ said Glyn, switching off the motor. ‘ Good to see you – fancy a cold drink?’

  ‘Love one.’

  I collapsed in a deckchair and Jasper and Verity sat on the grass. There was a slight awkwardness occasioned by the new dispensation. It wasn’t unpleasant and it was easily overcome. Other people’s difficulties were mere flea-bites to me at the moment.

  ‘So you’re off to see Roberto doing his number,’ I said. ‘ We’re hoping to go ourselves.’

  ‘Yes, it should be good,’ said Jasper. ‘I like dance. Though working at the Barbican was an eye-opener – dance is by far the least cost-effective of the arts. Without subsidy there quite literally wouldn’t be any.’

  ‘No wonder hoofers are so poorly paid,’ remarked Glyn, bringing a tray with orange juice and cans of beer and putting it down on the grass. ‘ It’s a meat market with a limited audience. And virtually no stars. We don’t have a single dancer on our books.’

  ‘But they pour in in their thousands to see things like Starlight Express and 42nd Street,’ pointed out Jasper. ‘It’s pure dance that can’t pay its way …’

  They began discussing the inequities of showbusiness, and I looked at Verity. She was pulling at the newly cut stubs of grass between her feet, but she sensed me looking at her and raised her head. I smiled. She smiled back.

  I rang Susan on Monday with the intention of unburdening myself. Properly this time. I couldn’t go on like this, and there was no one else to whom I could thoroughly debrief. I needed to hear what I said, in order to know what I thought.

  I called her from the CAB and was astonished to be told by Fiona that she was off sick.

  ‘But she’s never ill,’ I protested. ‘She doesn’t believe in it.’

  ‘No, I know, but there you are,’ said Fiona. ‘She is now. Unless she’s malingering, which is hardly likely! She did sound pretty rocky on the phone. Do you want to speak to Simon?’

  ‘No, that’s all right.’

  I dialled Susan’s number, let it ring a couple of times and then replaced the receiver guiltily. She was ill, for heaven’s sake, an almost unheard-of circumstance, and all I could do was badger her with my own problems. It made me realize how much I depended on her. The expression ‘there for me’ exactly summed up Susan’s position in my life. Opinionated, meddlesome and infuriating though she was, she was unwavering in her loyalty.

  I was five minutes into a standard exchange about noise pollution when she called me back.

  ‘You rang.’ Her voice sounded even more gravelly than usual.

  ‘I’m sorry, you shouldn’t have bothered to call me back.’

  ‘That’s all right. It’s only some fucking flu.’

  ‘Can I catch up with you in a moment?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I despatched my client with an info-pack on the rights and responsibilities of a neighbour who wants also to be a good citizen, plus the usual admonitions about not jumping too hastily into litigation. Then I rang Susan again.

  ‘How are you?’

  ‘Like absolute death.’

  ‘You must be. You could’ve knocked me down with a feather when Fiona told me. I’ve never known you take to your bed before.’

  ‘Who said anything about bed? I’m propped up in a chair like a Proustian heroine.’

  ‘Can I come and see you?’

  ‘Sure. Come for lunch. And bring some lemon barley, can you? If I’m going to revert to childhood I may as well do it properly.’

  I got the lemon barley, and also some prawn sandwiches, a goat’s cheese and seedless grapes. When I got to Susan’s I was surprised a second time by how ill she looked. The phone conversation had half – persuaded me that even if the illness were kosher she would still appear exactly the same, having subdued the virus by force of personality the way she did everything else. But she answered the door in plaid pyjamas and a large cardigan, teeth chattering, with the puffy eyes and reddened cheeks of the authentic flu-sufferer.

  ‘How sweet of you,’ she said as I put my purchases down in the kitchen. ‘I couldn’t swallow a sold mouthful myself, but you carry on. Just give me a squash, shaken not stirred.’

  She had her duvet and pillows on the sofa in the living-room.

  ‘I hate doing this, it’s piggy, but it’s preferable to staring at the bedroom walls,’ she explained as I sat down with my sandwich. ‘I can’t begin to tell you how nice it is to see you.’

  ‘Is there anything else you want?’ I asked. ‘Shopping, errands of mercy? A doctor?’

  ‘Not unless he’s Harrison Ford … but then what would I do with Harrison Ford in my condition?’

  She collapsed on to the sofa and pulled the pillows round her neck and the duvet up to her chin. ‘Yuk,’ she croaked. ‘I think I’m going to die.’

  I brought the lemon barley. She took a few sips, eyes closed, and then laid her head back. I stared at her, worried and disconcerted.

  ‘Are you sure you wouldn’t like a doctor? This isn’t like you.’

  ‘Mm.’ She swallowed wincingly round her swollen tonsils. ‘I fear it is. Hubris has brought this on. It’s been so long since the bacteria managed to get so much as a toehold they’ve decided to make the most of it.’

  ‘Have you been taking anything? Paracetamol?’

  ‘By the handful. I’m not due any more for two hours …’

  She lay still, apparently dozing. I gazed round the room. It was pretty, costly and cared for. Susan was not one of those single people to whom their surroundings mean nothing, and for whom the term ‘domestic’ is a dirty word. She was houseproud in a way that I had never been. It was hard to imagine Susan bustling about with a J-cloth and a bottle of houshold cleaner, but she obviously did, and on a regular basis. In the sunlight the glass on her expensive pictures gleamed, smudge-free, and the paintings beneath were innocent of the freckling of thunderflies so characteristic of this time of year. The paintings, though representational, were modern, and so were the sculptures and ceramics she collected – a child’s head, a leaping fish – but the inlay table on which a vase of freesias stood was antique. Above the table and opposite the window was an oval art nouveau mirror, the pewter frame made up of sinuously cavorting nymphs. Susan had a good eye, assured taste and the confidence to buy what pleased her and to place her purchases, old and new, alongside each other to great effect.

  Her breathing, each intake marked by a whisper, each exhalation with a whistle, grew steady. Sure she was asleep, I got up and helped myself to a glass of white wine from the fridge – I wasn’t being furtive, she would have been dismayed if I hadn’t done so. Returning, I walked over to the windows of the living-room which overlooked the river, at this time of year teeming with punts and rowboats full of tourists and local teenagers, the languid students having departed for the summer. People strolled on the footpath while kids on bikes and rollerblades wove in and out of them with sickening bravado. This was the other side of town to the one I normally inhabited – our area was town, Susan’s was gown, the city of the travel brochure and the weekend break, a place of s
pires and ancient trees and pubs abutting the river, a place where you could buy Byron or Benjamin Zefaniah on a Sunday, but might struggle to find a pint of milk on a weekday afternoon.

  The flat had a small balcony, hardly more than an extended windowsill, on which Susan had clustered a continental mass of pelargoniums in purple, red and white. I slid the glass panel back and leaned out. The warm, polluted sunshine bustled round me; I heard the clop of oars, the chatter and shriek of voices, the brisk rattle of skateboards. A large group of people were playing rounders in the open space beyond the river. They’d thrown down sweatshirts and caps as bases, and were using a cricket stump as a bat. They were all different shapes and sizes, a group of perhaps two or three families, I surmised.

  I wondered what it was like to be Susan, living in this delightful theatre-box of a flat, alone, with only those choices and decisions to make which directly affected her. It would have been nice to suppose that in these circumstances I too would have been as organized, as smart and as self-sufficient as Susan, but I doubted it I should have found it peaceful for a while and then I should have descended first into inertia and then into panic. I had long since concluded that I needed the convolutions, extensions and uncertainties of my life to divert me from the grim prospect of too much self-examination. Cosmetic changes, no matter how sweeping, could not alter the nature of the beast …

  It was as this last phrase occurred to me that I saw Patrick. It was a case of sight being quicker on the uptake than thought, for my eye followed his dawdling figure along the path for a good few seconds before my brain registered why it was doing so. And the moment it did, it was as though I’d called to him, for he stopped and glanced round.

  His stopping had nothing to do with me, of course. There she was, Lili the Chinese supermodel, coming along the path behind him. She wore jeans, with a black halter-neck T-shirt, and her hair was tied back in a red scarf the ends of which trailed artlessly down her bare back. Becca with soy sauce.