The Loop

by Anabel Donald

  When she’d started telling me about it, I’d settled comfortably on her sofa and prepared for the cruel and unusual punishment of being babbled at by women in love, twice in one week.

  It didn’t take me very long to spot that it wasn’t the same experience at all. Jams had been describing a man she loved. Polly was describing an acquaintance.

  An acquaintance she might marry, true. She was listing his advantages as a husband. Jams hadn’t been, and not just, I didn’t think, because her precious Jacob wasn’t as much of a catch as Polly’s Magnus.

  If Polly’s Magnus was as she described, there had to be something fundamentally wrong with him because no personality came through at all. Only a collection of attributes and habits.

  Halfway through I tried to stop her. ‘Do you love him?’ I said. ‘Do you actually want to spend the rest of your life with him?’

  I was trying to measure myself on their scale of feeling, and I thought I’d come somewhere between Polly and Jams. I wouldn’t, if I talked about Barty, gush like Jams, but that would partly be because gushing wasn’t my way. Nor would I get as involved as Polly had in the practical details of how to assess the man. I’d be thinking about assessing my feelings for the man.

  That wasn’t what Polly was talking about. She wanted me to judge him. Was he right for her? Not, did she think he was right for her?

  ‘Polly, he sounds ideal. He sounds too ideal to be true. He sounds like a rising-thirty’s fantasy.’

  ‘What’s with you?’ said Polly. ‘You’ve always been on at me to pick better men.’

  That was hard to answer, because it was partly true. ‘I wanted them not to be married,’ I said.

  ‘But you complained about them being unsuccessful. And bald. And not very attractive.’

  I had. But that was because I thought she’d buried her life in them, and done it on purpose. I’d thought she’d been bailing herself out in buckets, and throwing it away. I’d thought there’d been no emotional sense in the relationships.

  It was too much to tackle now. So I set my face to lively interest and Polly diverted herself to what we were going to wear when we went out. That always engaged her. On her deathbed she’d be planning the most suitable outfit for a deathbed.

  * * * * *

  Just before eight I popped upstairs to my flat to change. Now fully awake, I noticed the notes by the telephone. While I’d been sleeping on the sofa, Nick and Barty between them had been tramping in and out and running my life.

  Nick’s note:

  1. Have seen Grace, staying with her tonight. Working on Jacob, will report to you here 11am Sat unless you cancel.

  2. Have typed and printed your Chicago drugs doc notes. On printer.

  3. Alan Protheroe rang again. Said all done, you’d call Sat.

  4. Carl Nabokov rang, will ring again. Have put his London hostel phone number in address book.

  5. Barty came by, wanted you to sleep on, said he’d fetch Polly and see you both for dinner, pick-up 8pm (didn’t know if you’d want this, didn’t argue).

  Barty’s note:

  Forgive interference as per Nick’s note. You looked peaceful,

  asleep, didn’t want to wake you. Dinner on me.

  As I changed (no hard decisions here: I only had two expensive-restaurants outfits, which I’d worn for Barty so often already that he might very well propose to them) I wondered why I wasn’t annoyed. I hate interference, at least I thought I did. Maybe I didn’t hate competent, useful interference. Maybe if it was competent and useful I should reclassify it as help and welcome it. Maybe when Nick went to medical school and the position with Barty was resolved one way or another I could confiscate their sets of keys to my flat and get back to intelligent life, Jim, as we know it.

  Saturday, 2 April

  Chapter Seventeen

  Good restaurant, good food, good wine, good conversation, and bloody good to be home, I thought when Barty’d dropped us back and I’d closed the bedroom door on an exhausted Polly.

  It was just after midnight. I went upstairs to my flat, hung up my smart clothes, showered, put on old grey leggings and an outsize grey sweatshirt, rolled up my sleeves, put some Liszt (my latest craze) on the CD player and got down to work.

  I unpacked my Chicago luggage, sorted the dirty clothes and put the first load in to wash. Then I checked through Nick’s version of my notes for Alan, made one or two amendments, and put them in a large envelope with the Polaroid snaps of suggested locations.

  That was Alan done. Now for Jams. I moved into the kitchen with all the notes I’d made in Chicago and the tapes of the interviews with Maggie Whittaker and Sandra Balmer. Time to get the action board sorted.

  An hour, two cups of coffee and a CD later, I stepped back and looked at the cork board next to my kitchen window which now displayed the results of my trawl through everything I’d done since Sunday.

  Top left, the graduation photograph of Jacob. Nick was right, I had been slow and stupid yesterday. I should have checked with Maggie Whittaker that the woman in the photograph really was Jacob’s mother, as I supposed. I could check it with Abraham Master on Monday.

  My action list now read:

  see Abraham Master re sightings of Jacob, any other info (?foto,

  ?Tubbies’ finances)

  ?Chicago for Eng Lit

  ?the loop

  Sandra Balmer true/false? motive if lying?

  merchant bank stuff – Nick

  my grandparents: telephone number still extant?

  It was now getting on for two in the morning. There was only one thing on the list I could do anything about then, so I went next door and rang directory enquiries. Yes, there was a number for John Tanner in Ealing, the same number Eddy had given me. So my grandfather had been alive enough to pay his last telephone bill.

  I still wasn’t sleepy. I abandoned Liszt and Schubert, took the washing out, hung it up, put another load in, then sat down to go through what was left of my mail after Nick had sifted it.

  Mostly junk, which I tore and chucked mechanically, wondering if anyone ever actually bought the strange things companies wrote to me about, and if anyone believed that they would really win a million pounds if they ordered a pair of walking-boots with built-in torch within seven days!

  Then I stopped, dead. Junk mail. Mail. Jacob had left Carl’s apartment as his forwarding address from International House, but I’d gone through Jacob’s things, and there hadn’t been any letters. None at all. And Jams had written to Jacob, several times. Even if Jacob was the only person in the Western world not to be on someone’s junk mail list after living in the same place for a year. Jams’ letters should have been there.

  I added Ring Carl – ?letters to my list, and went to bed.

  I never go shopping with people. I dislike the process, and if it has to be done, then I see no reason why more than one person should suffer.

  But Polly woke very early on Saturday, she wanted to be with me, and she wanted to shop, and there was no way, at eight o’clock in the morning, that I could muster up the energy to resist her. Not delicately enough to leave our friendship intact.

  So I rang Nick to tell her not to come round till one or later, and by nine o’clock Polly and I were in Knightsbridge.

  If I was Polly, I’d find choosing clothes very hard. One, she has scads of money which she’s prepared to spend on them, while I look at a grossly overpriced jacket and see it in terms of so many more units of my pension plan. Two, nearly everything she tries on looks great, whereas I have to dress to counteract my flaws, and most things make me look squat or hippy or top-heavy.

  Polly was like an assembly-line quality checker. Try, try, try, no. Try, yes. Try, try, no. She’d ask for my advice (‘That’s the fun of a shopping trip!’) and she’d dismiss it (‘Oh Alex, not a neutral colour. Not this season.’).

  I like other people’s skills. This was hers. I didn’t rate the outcome – she’d look gorgeous in a sack – but I marvelled at the proc
ess. It was like watching Barty edit a documentary.

  We’d done Walton Street. We’d done Harrods and Harvey Nichols. Polly was the shopper, I was the pack horse, and when we arrived in Bond Street, I’d marvelled enough. I went on strike.

  ‘Coffee,’ I said.

  ‘It’s only an hour till you have to get back. We haven’t even looked at Farhi or Ozbek. And I have a sentimental attachment to Fenwicks.’

  ‘You can do them without me.’

  ‘It’s no fun alone,’ she wailed.

  ‘In here,’ I said, and shouldered open the glittering doors to a glittering café, with marble floors and marble tables and brightly polished brass fittings. I found an empty table, entrenched myself behind the carrier-bags, and wriggled my toes in my boots.

  Polly fetched two cups of coffee from a counter which offered a choice of eighty-two varieties, some of them decaffeinated, most of them flavoured with something else. There were little cards on the table telling us that Sophie, the proprietor of the shop, had dedicated her life to our coffee enjoyment. Either she was lying or she needed psychiatric help. Or maybe it was a US franchise.

  My coffee enjoyment was gulping it down, and I did. It tasted all right, but hardly a life’s work, and why on earth would you mess up decent coffee with vanilla?

  Polly sipped abstractedly, and I could see confidences were coming on. ‘I’m afraid of being lonely,’ she said. ‘That’s the truth of it. Do you think that’s a reason to get married?’

  What I thought was that one female friend-thing was enough for a morning. Shopping, OK. Heart to heart, OK. Both? Not if I could avoid it.

  I re-arranged the carrier bags abstractedly.

  ‘Alex?’ said Polly. ‘I know you heard me. Say something.’

  ‘I think you can be lonelier forced to be close to people you don’t want to be close to than by yourself,’ I said. ‘I was always lonely with my foster-parents. Marriage could be like that.’

  ‘I was very lonely in Hong Kong, at first.’

  ‘Stands to reason.’

  ‘It wasn’t just the different place, it was having no future. No future that I knew I wanted . . . That could be why I took up with Magnus. That’s what Richard said. He’s my boss, very sweet. But I don’t know. Put your mind to it, Alex. I trust your judgement about people. You were right about Clive.’

  That was no recommendation. Anyone would have been right about Clive, Polly’s last, useless man. A random poll of the nearest kindergarten would have rated him a no-hoper on day one. But Polly was steam-rollering on. ‘I want you to meet Magnus, and tell me what you think.’

  ‘When?’ I said guardedly.

  ‘He’s going to be in London. This weekend. And I wondered – Alex – would you have dinner with us tonight? You and Barty?

  Magnus would pay, and you could both give me your opinion.’

  ‘Barty may not be free.’

  ‘He is. I asked him on the way from Heathrow and he said it was fine with him but I had to ask you, it was your decision.’

  ‘Where’s Magnus staying?’ I said, fearing he’d be downstairs in her flat, which could so easily lead to him being upstairs in mine.

  ‘At his flat,’ she said. ‘I told you, he has a flat in London.’

  ‘So you did . . . Why does it matter what I think of your man?’

  Polly looked at me. She was getting intense. She’d be crying, any minute. ‘You’re my friend, Alex. I don’t want to lose you. I trust you.’

  ‘You won’t lose me,’ I said. ‘Even if Magnus and I hate each other’s guts, it won’t make any difference to you and me, Polly. Especially as it sounds as if Magnus spends his whole time somewhere else. If you get a dog, now – that’s a different matter. I’ll come with you to choose the dog, because I’ll be seeing a darn sight more of him. And so will you. Get your priorities straight, girl.’

  ‘I’m serious,’ said Polly.

  ‘You’ve plenty of other friends,’ I said, trying to push her away a little. I’m not good with sentimentality.

  ‘Yes, but you can lose them when you pair up . . . That’s why I’m so pleased about Barty.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said warily. ‘Get me another cup of coffee, will you? And hold the vanilla flavour, this time.’

  ‘They have eighty-two varieties. Live a little.’

  ‘I do. I live and I drink coffee. I don’t live through the coffee.’

  So she fetched me another cup, but it didn’t distract her. ‘I’m pleased about Barty because you and he are obviously a permanent fixture, and he and I get on so well, so when the children come and you’ll have to look after them and I visit, then he won’t mind if I’m in the house when he gets home, and he won’t make those faces like, get your awful friend out of here, can’t I have a drink in peace?’

  ‘You’re taking too much for granted,’ I said.

  ‘Rubbish. You love him. He loves you. And he’s got money. And he’s kind. It’s so rare to find the one person, Alex, you wouldn’t pass it up. Like poor Jams, she was absolutely sure she’d found him, and then something happens—’

  ‘We don’t know that something happened to Jacob. Jams may just have blown a quickie out of all proportion.’

  ‘But that isn’t what you really believe.’

  ‘I really believe there’s no such thing as perfect love. But that may only be because I’ve spent hours shopping and I’m grumpy. Come on, let’s hit Farhi.’

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was just after one when I reached the flat. Polly was still safely in Bond Street, there was no sign of Nick but there were two messages on the answering machine. Carl Nabokov wanted me to return his call. Nick would be by about two o’clock.

  Good. An hour I’d spend it on a run. I hadn’t had any proper exercise for nearly a week and I could feel my arteries clogging and cellulite colonising my thighs.

  Three miles later, bathed in virtuous sweat and with aching shins, I collapsed onto the sofa. Nick was waiting for me, excited. ‘Alex— hey, Alex—’

  ‘Water,’ I said.

  ‘This is important!’

  ‘Water. And towel. This minute.’

  She fetched them. ‘Now will you listen?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, gulping the water. A week without running had been too long.

  ‘It’s about the Tubbies. Grace rang a man in Aberdeen who knows all about sects, and he told her about them. They’re very peculiar and they disapprove of nearly everything, which we sort of knew, but we didn’t know one crucial thing. They don’t approve of bodies, except for fighting righteous wars. They’re very into fighting. But they don’t have sex. At all. So they never have children, not of their own. They adopt, or they did, but then when abortion and single mothers took over they couldn’t find anyone to adopt, I suppose, so Jacob’s probably one of the last of the English Tubbies, age-wise.’

  ‘No he isn’t. There were children at the service.’

  ‘Anyway, he’s got real parents, somewhere, or a mother at least, and he’ll know who she is because they’re always told that they’ve been saved and who from. The more sin the child inherits, the better, apparently. Tubmaster always took prostitutes’ children, when he could. So I’d have been a candidate, except Mum didn’t know about the Tubbies, plus I was dead useful because I took her to the top of the council housing list. But do you see, Alex? He must have known. And he may have gone looking for his family. And there’s a mother out there who might not have wanted Jacob to pop up again.’

  ‘Jacob might not have wanted to pop up again either,’ I said. ‘But all the same – it’s an angle. It’s definitely an angle.’

  ‘Master might know where he came from. We can ask him. And Sandra Balmer might know.’

  ‘Well done, Nick,’ I said.

  She just nodded. ‘I’ve put my notes on the Tubbies in the Jacob file. Plus I’ve got the name of the merchant bank. On the action board. They’ll be closed for the Easter weekend, I suppose, or maybe not Grace says becau
se of the foreign stock markets being open.’

  ‘D’you want to try them?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and blushed. ‘I’m going away with Grace. To her cottage. Until Monday night. Leaving now. If that’s OK with you?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Thanks. My best to Grace.’

  I didn’t smile with relief until the door had closed behind her. Then I took off my clothes, put a piano concerto of Liszt’s on the CD, loudly, and went upstairs to shower.

  One less person to deal with. Now if Magnus had missed his plane and Barty could be persuaded to take Polly out to dinner without me, I could have an evening to myself. But at least I was more or less guaranteed an afternoon, I gloated as I dressed. Clean jeans. Clean sweatshirt, short-sleeves, navy blue, no logo. Bare sore feet.

  Back in the kitchen heading for coffee, I realised I was hungry. I had some tea-cakes that needed eating in the freezer compartment of the fridge. Twenty-four of them. I’d bought a jumbo-sized packet of forty-eight, reduced at Tesco. It was taking me a while to get through them: I don’t much like tea-cakes and the defrosting was too much hassle. Generally, when I’m hungry, I eat right then. I’d tried toasting them, frozen, but they’d set fire to the toaster.

  I took out three, sliced them thin, shoved them in the toaster and watched them carefully. They didn’t burn, and with jam, they didn’t taste too bad. And they were cheap.

  Then I poured a second cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table for an orgy of telephoning.