Before I Knew You

by Amanda Brookfield

  Behind her there was an audible rustle of bedclothes. ‘What are you doing? It’s the middle of the night, isn’t it?’

  ‘No, sweetie, it’s morning, and I’m looking at this picture of the Chapmans – the kids, the parents, they’re just too perfect.’ Beth carefully positioned the photograph back where she had found it. ‘Did you say he was a music teacher?’

  ‘Head of the department and deputy head of the school. It’s one of those famous old swanky places – far too pricy for my gang.’ An arm, its hairs smooth and dark, appeared from among the bedclothes and patted the expanse of empty sheet on her side.

  ‘Uh-huh.’ Beth chuckled. ‘No, honey, you’re tempting, but I’m going to resist you and go for my jog. I thought I might try and find a route along the river. I guess there is one?’ Receiving no reply, she set about trying to remember where she had stowed her exercise pants and trainers. It had been something of a challenge, unpacking – a couple of empty drawers here and there, one third of a rail and not many coat-hangers in the closet. ‘Is there anything I should watch out for?’ she murmured, kissing William’s ear a few minutes later. ‘Any local dangers?’

  ‘Only my sons,’ quipped William, drowsily, ‘but they’re a couple of miles away and will be asleep for many hours yet … Hey, are you sure you have to go right now? There are other ways of staying fit, you know.’ He tried to catch hold of her arm.

  Beth dodged, playfully slapping the bedclothes. ‘You are corrupting and terrible and I adore you. I’m taking my purse belt so I can buy fresh Danish if I see them. I’ll do my usual forty minutes … unless I get lost,’ she added happily, closing the door behind her.

  ‘Be careful!’ William called, raising his head and then dropping it back among the pillows with a groan. So early in the morning Beth would be lucky to find a newsagent open, let alone somewhere selling decent pastries. As always, her energy was remarkable. The last thing he felt like doing was jogging through the grime of London. Arriving via the drab solidity of the M4 traffic, the ugly concrete tower blocks and the murky brown of the Thames streaming under Kew Bridge, William had caught himself wishing Susan could either have stayed put in their marital home in Woking or moved deeper into the countryside. Her parents being in Richmond had been the rationale behind the decision (they had subsequently moved to Devon) – as well as decent schools – but it wasn’t a part of the capital William knew well or for which he had ever felt much affinity.

  During previous attempts to spend time with his sons, using hotels and the spare bedrooms of friends, he had often given up on the whole miserable effort and scooped them into a hire-car for a spell up north with his own parents instead. The two elder ones complained vociferously, mainly at the prospect of their grandparents’ tiny television, which managed a flickering rendition of the five terrestrial channels and then only if the weather was clear. Once they got there, however, they always seemed to enjoy themselves hugely, wolfing their grandmother’s meals like the starving animals they were, accompanying their grandfather on fishing trips or setting up elaborate golf courses round the molehills and rabbit burrows that pitted the rough outer reaches of the garden.

  His parents drove William mad in so many ways – opinions like stuck records, ancient, nonsensical, maddening domestic habits, distrust of technology and foreigners, scrimping when money wasn’t, and never had been, tight – and yet as a pair of devoted, unquestioning grandparents their qualities were unsurpassed. Even George unfurled a little bit up there, sitting more obviously enthralled than the other two while his grandfather demonstrated the making of a certain fly, or sprawling happily on a riverbank as the four of them watched for water ripples round their lines.

  The shrill ring of the bedside phone wrenched William back to full consciousness. Fearing for Beth – thinking suddenly of her purse belt, bulging with her freshly changed money, her open, trusting face, ready to love everything British regardless of its worthiness – he was momentarily relieved to hear the harsh, girls’-boarding-school voice of his ex-wife instead.

  ‘I tried your mobile but it was off. Thank goodness you gave me this number too.’

  ‘Hello, Susan. This is a bit early, even for you.’

  ‘Crisis.’

  ‘Oh, God, what?’ William sat up so fast he cricked his neck and then compounded the injury by letting his head thwack back against the bare wall, occupying the space where he was more used to finding a cushioned headboard.

  ‘George got a call late last night asking if he can play cricket in Weybridge this afternoon, filling in for someone with a groin strain or something, because, as you know, or if you don’t you ought to, he didn’t get through the club trials in spite of playing his heart out – he’s really good this year and should have been selected – but anyway, because of that his first reaction was to say no, but of course that would have been entirely the wrong response …’

  William rubbed his sore neck while Susan talked, trying to rejoice in the fact that he was no longer married to her and might, one day, not many years hence, be able to dispense with the need to correspond with her at all. Except, of course, for the occasional big event, like weddings, funerals, christenings, degree ceremonies … His thoughts drifted, conjuring an image of Susan in one of the dreadful hats made by the friend on the Isle of Wight, and Harry goofing round in a gown and mortar board …

  ‘William, have you been listening?’

  ‘How could I not?’ William replied drily. ‘I’m either to drive to Weybridge or to take charge of Alfie. Harry has been poorly but is feeling better now. All three are to come and stay from tomorrow instead of the day after and for as long as I want because you have a mountain of orders to get through and want to go to the Isle of Wight to visit Corinne, who has just had the all-clear on her chemo.’

  ‘There’s no need to use that tone of voice … as if it’s all some massive chore, as if …’

  Again, William let her talk, trying to rise above the urge to get angry. She needed to let off steam. She had, after all, done so much of the parenting alone. He – as she never missed an opportunity to remind him – had been a brute. No one, least of all Susan, seemed prepared to acknowledge that he had been through a lot too. The divorce had been ghoulishly painful but necessary; it had taken courage to force that into the open, to see it through. Angling for the transfer to New York might have been selfish, but by the time he had agreed to all Susan’s terms for divorce, the extra money had been badly needed. And for the whole three years he had done his level best to make up for the distance, fighting tooth and nail round Susan’s endless plans and change of plans, all the subtle scuppering tactics to make things more difficult – to make him feel worse than he did already.

  ‘I miss them,’ William cut in, when she was still mid-flow. ‘Every day, I miss them. The only reason I have not been on my knees begging to have them under this roof for every minute of my entire four-week stay is for fear that they might not want it. Okay? Got that? Now, tell me where this cricket match is, and I’ll solve the problem of Alfie by taking him with me.’

  Beth cast a last look back at the house as she jogged away, thinking that the line of sturdy red-brick houses looked fine enough but that she had done her time of living next to and on top of other members of the human race. When she had been growing up in Baltimore, their apartment had been shabby and small, with walls thin enough to crumple under a fist-punch. Four years at Georgetown followed by a working life in New York had seen considerable improvements on the accommodation front, but never in Beth’s life had she been happier than she was now, with William in the spacious rural splendour of Connecticut.

  And London streets were so narrow, she noticed, reducing her jog to a brisk walk as she dodged a solid line of vehicles parked half up on the pavement, bumper to bumper, all sporting the special resident’s permit stickers that Andrew Chapman had told William about and William had told her. Except that she hadn’t really listened, since driving per se was an activity she planned entire
ly to avoid. Handling a stick-shift, navigating alien one-way systems, congestion charges, indecipherable parking regulations – how would that be a holiday?

  Beth turned left out of their street towards the main road and the river, which she knew – from having taken the precaution of checking William’s collapsing, yellowed A–Z before setting off – lay just beyond. She had the image of the page firmly imprinted on her mind – she was good like that, able to retain pictures and facts for the length of time that they were to be immediately useful. William, in contrast, could remember all sorts of random interesting data effortlessly, like dates of battles and who was president of where and which year a certain vineyard in France had produced a certain wine. Beth loved it that he was so smart, but liked it even more that there was never any smugness about these extra files of knowledge. It added to the joy of having escaped Dimitri, who had taken great delight – sometimes publicly – in probing the chasms in her general knowledge.

  It wasn’t until Beth had found her way down to the riverside that she began to run properly, looking for the rhythm she knew she would need if she was going to complete the course she had set herself – crossing to the north side at Hammersmith Bridge and then coming back south over Barnes Bridge, which looked like it served trains as well as people. The route was pretty smooth, of compacted mud and empty, apart from the occasional dog-walker and cyclist. Perfect conditions, Beth chivvied herself, as a sharp pain stabbed through her left knee.

  Beside her the river darkened as the last patch of blue sky slid from view. A brisk wind was coming off it, thick with the possibility of rain, driving her hair at annoying angles across her face. With the tightness in her left leg worsening, Beth found herself contemplating the sore truth of never having been a natural athlete, of having knees that angled ever so slightly inwards, and hips a tad too wide for her petite frame and a rear-end that – given a glimmer of a chance – sucked up calories like some guzzling incubus. She ran so she could eat and drink things that gave her pleasure, she reminded herself, things like croissants and cheesecake and cookies and William’s prized stock of fine wine. She ran so she was never again to be the kid who, through her early teenage years, didn’t get picked for anything by anybody except pitying teachers; the kid whose stomach rolls had sat like stacked doughnuts between her hips and chest, prompting frequent, unsubtle eye-rolls of despair from her mother, ruining attempts to wear prom gowns and – worst of all – provoking teasing, painful stomach pinches from her uncle Hal, whose weekend visit for her thirteenth birthday had stretched to an interminable four years.

  Oh, yes, she had big reasons to run. Picking up her pace, Beth was rewarded by the knee pain and all the accompanying negativity segueing to a sudden unexpected euphoria – a sense of such rightness about her place in the world, on the windy London riverbank, with her hair stinging her eyes, and the map in her head and the tumbledown, homey house to return to, and William, sleepy, unshaven, loving, waiting for her, that it was all she could do not to shout her joy to the gun-metal skies. Instead she grinned at an approaching fellow jogger, an old guy with bandy legs and half-steamed glasses, who managed a brusque British nod in return.

  Beth shifted her attention to the river. A pencil of a boat was slicing its way down the middle, its eight occupants labouring with such visible rhythmic fluidity that she found herself increasing her pace still further, out of some dim quest for emulation. The rowers were young and muscled, impossible to copy, of course – but thirty-eight wasn’t so old, Beth reasoned cheerfully, not these days, not for her. At the same age her mother had already been in freefall (widowed, propped by bourbon and pills and the dreadful Hal), whereas her own was just taking off.

  And there was Hammersmith Bridge already – a fine piece of architecture, but also such a neat staple of a thing compared to the bridges back home that Beth felt a wonderful burst of certainty that London would be easy to conquer, easy to love, that it would lay itself open for her much as William had in the coffee shop nearly two years before. ‘Go, girl,’ she breathed, feeling beautiful as she always did when she ran her hardest, when the calories were flying off, and her knock-knees pumping so hard she could almost believe they were straight.

  3

  Standing on the main concourse of Grand Central Station that Friday, Sophie wanted, more than anything, to be alone – not away from the crowds, she liked the crowds, but from Andrew, who had a finger in one ear and his mobile pressed to the other in the hope of locating Geoff. They had only been off the train for a minute or two and Sophie was pretty sure she had already glimpsed the proposed rendezvous spot, a central kiosk crowned with a large brass clock, in snapshots between the hurrying travellers. But Andrew was panicking, just as he had on day one when he hadn’t understood the supermarket checkout girl’s question about ‘paper or plastic’, and on day two when they had got lost during a quest to find the country club that was supposed to have a swimming-pool and, that morning, when the cat hadn’t shown up for breakfast.

  America was making Andrew edgy, Sophie mused, which was a shame, of course, but also something of a relief for her, since it removed the sense of being solely responsible for his disappointments. She moved a little away from him and tipped her head back to admire again the vast cathedral curves of the station’s interior: the light alone was transfixing, pouring in through the giant arched, barred windows and streaming off the rows of electric bulbs studding the moulding along the tops of the pillars and walls. It elevated every detail – the soft brown stone, the balustrades along the end staircases and balconies – to the matchless elegance of a colossal ballroom. It had never occurred to Sophie that she would like anything on the holiday, (except perhaps the arrival – in eighteen and a half days’ time – of her daughters). And yet here it was, a swell of pleasure – and with Andrew making irritating faces at her (now that he had spotted the central kiosk), not to mention the prospect of Ann and Geoff, hale and hearty, in charge of their afternoon.

  ‘Sophie!’ His voice throbbed with irritation.

  Sophie nodded but hung back for a moment more, not to annoy, as her husband assumed, or because of the arresting spectacle of the station, but simply to relish a final few seconds of being motionless within such a hubbub – the pinprick of stillness within a storm.

  Geoff’s once thick mop of hair was so closely shaven and bristled with grey that without Andrew falling – in a most un-Andrew-like way – into his arms, Sophie wasn’t certain she would have recognized him. She had forgotten how short he was, five eight at the most to Andrew’s six two, yet he seemed somehow the stronger presence with his tanned, muscled forearms and calves gleaming like polished wood against the bright yellow of his Ralph Lauren shirt and smartly pressed blue shorts. He exuded an almost tangible aura of self-assurance; a man, clearly, in the prime of his life, with money in his pocket and dominion over his own happiness – a dominion of which Sophie had no recollection during his London years as a jobbing musician.

  Ann had changed less, with her auburn hair cut into the same bobbed style she had favoured since her twenties and the heavily made-up face, designed, Sophie had always suspected, to draw attention away from the thick, matronly figure. Yet that suited her now, Sophie realized, as if her late forties were precisely the era Ann’s body had been waiting for to come into its own; rounded, strong, statuesque. A latecomer to their penurious, post-university group, several years older, fussing and bossy with Geoff, Ann had always been more tolerated than welcomed by his close friends. But there was no denying how well the pair of them looked now, how aligned, with their identically confident sweeping embraces and the merry finishing of each other’s sentences as they gushed about plans for the visit.

  ‘We thought Ground Zero – you have to see Ground Zero – although it’s fast disappearing under fresh concrete –’

  ‘And MOMA –’

  ‘And lunch. We know this heavenly Italian place at Thompson and Bleecker –’

  ‘Although the museum restaurant
is excellent.’

  ‘Moma?’ echoed Sophie, as Ann fell into step beside her and the men strode on ahead.

  ‘Museum of Modern Art.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ After the cool of the station the swamp temperatures of the street were a shock. Belting out of the pavements, shimmering between the sheer towering walls of stone and glass, the heat seemed literally to thicken the air. Even the dense indigo of the sky, visible in geometric shapes above the tops of the buildings, felt part of a conspiracy of compression, like a layer sealing the city in rather than a portal to a wider world. Sophie groped in her bag for her sunglasses, while Andrew hurriedly pulled out the peaked cap he had bought in Naples the year before – dark blue, emblazoned with the words Ciao Baby, much to the amusement of his daughters. After only a few steps Sophie could feel the perspiration inching its way down her ribcage, seeping out from her armpits, her bra strap, the top of her neck, up under the hot bundle of her hair. Peering over her sunglasses, she felt a pulse of empathy for Andrew, whose brown shirt was breaking out in dark dots of perspiration, like the surfacing of a sinister rash.

  ‘Isn’t it a furnace?’ yelped Ann. ‘I should think William and Beth were delighted to escape to good old England – wet, as usual, so our daughter informs us. She’s there visiting friends from her Cambridge days. You know she went to Geoff’s old college, don’t you? Third generation, Geoff was so thrilled. She’s at Harvard now – a postgrad in biochemistry, of all things. We don’t know where she gets it, but it’s just wonderful having her down the road.’