In time Grace met other men and enjoyed a few dalliances, but held back from entering anything you might call a relationship. It wasn’t that she had been hurt or that she didn’t trust men—she had had a rough time, but didn’t buy into the idea of living out of her past—it was simply that she had learned that she was a pretty special person who had a pretty special and durable heart, and that she could go through dark times on her own and survive them. She became less interested in guys who hadn’t been similarly tested. Superficial men, who wanted to talk to her and blah blah blah all night now seemed like kids to her. And that’s how she connected with Mark.
Mark was not Grace’s type. He was nervous and awkward, and his style and sense of humour were all wrong. He was a computer guy: introverted and with a limited range of interests and friends. But he too was coming out of a life-defining break-up, where he had been loved and let down by a girl who was out of his league, and who had dumped him once she realised it. She was another cold-blooded killer, who was able to walk away from a happy relationship as if it never happened. Mark didn’t have a supportive family or the same deep reservoir of feeling that Grace had, so he simply self-medicated with alcohol and a massive credit card bill. He knew enough to stop all that before his life was irreversibly ruined, but not before he had amassed a repertoire of anecdotes and near-death experiences. He and Grace had amazing, therapeutic conversations into the small hours until they would fall asleep together, fully clothed and talked-out. Of course, they both knew that their relationship would not last. This was a practice relationship with the stabilisers on, underwritten by an unspoken agreement not to hurt each other. It ended amicably, when Mark was offered a research job in Rotterdam and Grace urged him not to pass it up. They parted, classically, at the airport with a hug and peck on the cheek that was more like a sister packing her brother off to boarding school than two lovers separating. Mark is the only one of her past loves that she still has occasional contact from, albeit intermittently. He is still single.
Andrew had always been a little coy about his past. He had said that what transpired between him and his past girlfriends needed a little privacy for their sakes, but Grace had known him long enough for the general picture to emerge in fragments, which she had been able to piece together for herself, though without verifying it with Andrew. She knew that he had a long-term girlfriend while at secondary school, someone called Rebecca who seemed like a female version of Andrew—they would probably have made Prom King and Queen had they lived in the States. They broke up when they went to different universities and discovered whole new worlds. He had a few girlfriends at college but most of them seemed to have been a case of having someone on his arm, or someone to stay over with. In his twenties he seemed to enjoy long periods of bachelorhood, although two names had come up a few times, and some details had been prised from him.
The first was Rachel, who seems to be the only girl he went out with that he really liked, or possibly loved. Rachel was an ex-girlfriend of a college friend of his. She and Andrew seemed to have gone out for over a year. Grace never got the full story about why they split but she had guessed that it had involved infidelity on his part, judging by the way he always spoke fondly of that period, but glossed over the details of how it ended. He would only say that he made some mistakes in that relationship and that it forced him to look at himself.
The other relationship was with Lucy, which was the only time he seemed to have dated someone from his job. Apparently it started at a Christmas party and continued as a drunken and lusty relationship. Grace had got the impression that they didn’t visit too many museums or meet each other’s parents, but that they both had plenty of practice at getting good at the one thing a woman doesn’t mind her future husband getting good at. The relationship burned out, and she left the company for a promotion elsewhere. Lucy was the one woman from Andrew’s past that Grace certainly did not want him to keep in contact with.
Grace left for the airport, leaving it a little bit late and driving with a heavy right foot. She blasted music from the car stereo—Sparks’ Propaganda—and opened the driver’s window, the incoming rush of air like a leaf blower on her overstimulated brain. Even though it was rush hour, she got lucky with the traffic, which was all headed in the opposite direction.
She waited for Andrew in the arrivals hall and held up an A4 sheet on which she had written ROBERT DOWNEY JUNIOR in lipstick, as a fake airport pick-up sign; an in-joke about her No. 1 movie star crush who looked nothing like Andrew. Grace was early and stood leaning against a superfluous crush barrier, people-watching. The airport was quiet, with men in red polo shirts pushing empty wheelchairs and regular travellers getting a squirt of perfume or aftershave in the duty free area. A guy was sitting on one of the elevated thrones having his shoes buffed at the shoeshine station, a public shoeshine, she thought, being a luxury that could only ever be enjoyed by creeps. A sleepy shop assistant was sending texts at the luggage shop, possibly the most bored person at the airport; Grace wondered how many people arrived at an airport with an armful of clothes, looking to buy luggage.
Grace always felt anaesthetised by airports and was glad of some dead time to allow the day’s agitated momentum to settle and subside. In her pocket was a phone that was displaying a series of missed calls and incoming emails, symbols of the fake urgency of impatience. She caught herself reaching for it, her hands habitually unused to idleness, but then checked herself and decided not to puncture the bubble of calm she was starting to ease into. Eventually, Andrew stepped through the arrival doors in his crumpled suit, looking tired but handsome and in need of a shave. Grace gave a little wolf whistle and collapsed into giggles. His face broke into an open smile of surprise at seeing her. Before saying anything they took a moment to have their first kiss in ages.
‘Good to see you, wine breath,’ she said.
‘You too. I just had one mini bottle on the flight to help me sleep, by the way. The guy behind me had his knees against my seat the whole way. Thanks for picking me up—it’s a lovely surprise. You spelt my name wrong, though,’ he said, noticing the pick-up sign.
‘Lucky you got here first. Had Robert Downey Junior not been delayed buying snow globes in duty free you might have missed your chance.’
‘How have you been? I was dying to see you. God, it’s so great to have all this business travel out of the way. I don’t want to see any more bullet points until the afterlife. It’s nice to think that my next flight is to Kyoto, with my wife!’
‘If you’re lucky—I haven’t signed anything yet.’
They went to find the car, full of a couple’s silly talk and holding hands the way Grace would have liked them to do more often. They pulled out of the car park and got a bit lost with the new road layout, eventually cheating their way to the exit by using a bus lane, and getting a reprimanding beep from a bendy bus for doing so.
They stopped off at Sakura, a Japanese takeaway, and ordered cha han, udon noodles, fish and vegetable tempura, and some sashimi; over-ordering on an empty stomach. They grabbed some wine and Pringles at the off-licence, and planned an evening on the couch.
‘We went to this restaurant in Amsterdam after one of the long meetings, just to unwind and pick over how it went,’ said Andrew, as they ate on the couch. ‘They were doing road works near the canal and there was a mouse scuttling around the restaurant in plain sight. When I mentioned it to the waitress she just said: “Oh, they always do that” and then waved her hand in a sort of forgeddaboudid way and walked off. I couldn’t believe it! The others didn’t care. I was the only one freaked out by it and spent the evening with my trouser legs tucked into my socks. I mean, imagine what the kitchen was like?’
‘Oh, you’re giving me the creeps. I just couldn’t do it. You should give them a stinky review online,’ said Grace, fishing around the end of the noodle box with chopsticks and then switching to a fork.
‘No point. If they don’t care about mice,
they won’t care about reviews.’
‘How was the cheese museum by the way? Did you pick me up anything?’
‘I didn’t, I’m afraid—it’s strangely difficult to pick out cheese for a woman, as it turns out. I would have liked to look around to see a bit of Amsterdam actually, but the crowd I was with just wanted to go drinking. I never feel in holiday mode on these trips.’
‘Yeah, right. Men always talk up the difficulty and hardship of business travel.’
‘I’m practically monastic on the road, but I know what you mean. Some guys act like they are on shore leave. Especially the older ones. It’s great to think I have practically a full month ahead with no meetings though. Just fun stuff. How are your folks by the way?’ he asked.
‘Good, good, good. I’m trying to encourage them to plan a holiday. Not just a city break with museums and stuff, but something epic. Dad still has his retirement lump sum, so he should use it to whisk Mam away. Go somewhere far flung while their health is good and they can enjoy it. They just keep resisting it. I think they’re worried about my brother coping on his own, but he’s a grown-up.’
‘What if he stayed with us? I mean just for a few nights while they’re away?’ Andrew suggested, picking through the tempura vegetables for clumps of batter without the accompanying veg.
‘But we’re going away ourselves and even if we weren’t, we have to stop babying him. We need to take him out of his comfort zone for his own sake. Who knows what the future holds? He needs to be able to cope by himself eventually. He’s stuck on this little merry-go-round of a life: his job only keeps him busy about two days a month, he has no concept of money or responsibility and, worst of all, he keeps Mam and Dad frozen in time. They’ve done their bit as parents and are entitled to enjoy their retirement, without having him to fuss over.’
‘Are you not being a bit harsh? He’s not doing any harm to anybody, and your parents seem okay with the arrangement,’ said Andrew.
‘What happens when my folks get older and need help?’ asked Grace. ‘We’re getting to the stage where, in a few years’ time, it will be our turn to look after them. So, who will all that fall to? Saint Grace, that’s who. You too, in fact. My brother will be no help and, if anything, we’ll end up taking responsibility for him too. We should be planning our future together, building a new life, all that sort of stuff, but I know exactly how it’s going to turn out. All the family trouble, along with its luggage, will present itself at our door. That’s why we need to do something about this now. Otherwise the future is going to look very much like the past. By the way, they have invited us over for dinner on Sunday and I said yes without asking you because I know you love me and would do anything to make me happy.’
Grace paused with her chopsticks poised over the noodles.
‘Sorry for dumping on you. I think when you’re away this stuff goes around and around in my head. Don’t mind me. I feel a bit better just saying all this instead of thinking it.’
‘It’s fine,’ said Andrew. ‘It’s good training for when I’m your husband and I’m legally required to listen to you. And of course I’m on for dinner on Sunday. I haven’t seen your folks in ages. I was thinking I must get your dad a ticket to come with us the next time we’re going to a match.’
‘Good idea. He needs to expand his social circle. He’s got a couple of friends that he still meets from work, and he does a bit of volunteering here and there, but he has no regular outlet. He needs to join something so that he can meet some new people. You need to keep reinventing yourself in life, churning your friends, but he has just settled in to pottering about all day,’ said Grace.
‘Maybe I’ll see if there’s something I could do with him, but my Dad’s the same. A bit of golf and a bit of helping out at the credit union, but really he is terrible for falling out of touch with people. My mother is much better. She volunteers at the church, helps out with the residents’ association, all that stuff. It’s funny, she stayed at home all those years, but she’s much more businesslike than he is. I think he got used to having staff that did everything for him and that made him look more organised than he was.’
They chatted away and finished off the food. They should have got a second bottle of wine, but then maybe not: it was still a school night after all. They brought everything into the kitchen, tip-toeing over the cold tiles and just stacking the dirty dishes by the sink to be dealt with tomorrow, along with the unpacking and the missed calls.
Grace did the short version of her evening bathroom routine and hopped into bed beside Andrew, who was already dangerously close to sleep. She cuddled into his warm body—his high body temperature being one of his unique selling points when they first got together—and continued chatting with her cheek on his chest. While she did have to confess that one or two things from the next day’s to-do list floated into her mind, she quickly let them go and settled into a cosy, sleepy state of contentment, zipped-up from the inside.
Chapter 13: Mrs Hawthorn
Hungry Paul woke with the feeling of being fastened to his bed by Velcro. His body ached with a painful stiffness that stretched up and down his spine and into his thighs and calves. At the previous evening’s judo class, they had put the gentle beginners’ exercises behind them early and moved on to the business end of the training, practising various hip tosses and shoulder throws. Hungry Paul had been paired off with a man who was built like a wheelie bin, had cauliflower ears and who wore tape on his fingers, like Michael Jackson. He was called Lazlo and he didn’t speak any English, not that he left much room for small talk when he was tossing Hungry Paul around like a chef handling pizza dough. It was unclear whether the sensei had confused Hungry Paul with someone else, or just wanted to discourage him from ever coming back again, but it was clearly a monumental mismatch. Even when Lazlo stood still without putting up any defence, Hungry Paul could barely lift one of his legs off the mat, ending up with his arms and legs clamped around him like a randy corgi.
The evening had already started badly when Hungry Paul picked up what would become a black eye, not from combat, but from the stacked mats that were stored on a high shelf and fell off onto his face when he tried to pull them down. He then got a telling off because he hadn’t cut his toenails and scratched the sensei’s shin while he was demonstrating the moves they were supposed to practice. After seeing him get ragdolled all evening by Lazlo, the sensei came over and told Hungry Paul that he was improving but that he needed to fix his mind-set, pointing to the tea stains on Hungry Paul’s gi as evidence.
Hungry Paul came home and went straight to bed for twelve hours, too stiff and tired to shower or brush his teeth. His body lay frozen the next morning as Helen knocked on his door to remind him about going to the hospital to do some volunteering that morning. He tried to shout out that it might be more appropriate to visit A&E as a patient, but even his tongue felt broken. Eventually, he managed to manoeuvre out of bed and make his way gingerly to the bathroom, walking like a stiff slow-motion cowboy.
His entreaties to his mother over breakfast were batted away. Helen, who never approved of the whole martial arts idea anyway, wasn’t going to allow judo-related excuses to become admissible.
‘Come on, you said yourself that charity has to involve a bit of sacrifice,’ said Helen, ‘You can’t just back out when it doesn’t suit you. The one thing about helping vulnerable people is that it’s a bigger deal when you let them down. You’ve already missed one visit, so no buts, let’s get going.’
‘Your mother’s right,’ added Peter, ‘and if you stay here you’ll have to help me empty the attic and haul loads of junk to the dump. Not a nice task for an aching body—I should know!’
Hungry Paul gave up. He knew tough love when he saw it.
‘Okay, but go easy on me. No lifting old ladies or moving beds around. My body is on strike today.’
‘To be honest, I’m not keen on these judo lesso
ns,’ said Helen, ‘You’re going to have a nice shiner for your Chamber of Commerce prize-giving on Saturday. You’ll look like a thug in the photos.’
‘What photos?’ asked Hungry Paul. ‘They didn’t say anything about photos.’
‘Oh they’re bound to have the local paper there or some newsletter for the Chamber. Don’t worry about it. You should be proud of yourself that you’ve been shortlisted. We’re certainly proud of you, aren’t we Peter?’
‘I think it’s great. I just thought it was a bit of fun, but you did really well to get to the last three. What was your entry?’ asked Peter.
‘You’ll have to wait until the prize-giving. It’s supposed to be a big reveal. I mightn’t even win. I hope there isn’t too much fuss,’ worried Hungry Paul.
‘Just enjoy it. It’s not often you get to go to this sort of thing. We’ll all be there to support you.’ Peter was trying to stop Hungry Paul projecting forward and worrying about one of his least favourite things: a hullabaloo.
‘Anyway, we had better be going. See you later, love.’ Helen kissed Peter on the forehead, bald heads in general getting more kisses than the hairy kind, which is some small comfort.
When they arrived at the hospital, Helen made a suggestion. ‘Why don’t we split up this time? We want to make sure everybody gets a visit and we don’t want to crowd the patients.’
Hungry Paul’s shoulders dropped. His conversation game was a bit off and he wasn’t sure he would be able to fill an hour with his usual repertoire of comments about the weather and questions about the standard of food at the hospital.
As they entered the ward, the lady in the first bed shouted ‘Religious bitch—mind your own business,’ at Helen, again confusing her with the visiting Minister of the Eucharist.
‘Why don’t you help that lady?’ suggested Helen, guiding Hungry Paul with a gentle push to his lower back.
LEONARD AND HUNGRY PAUL Page 12
