William glared at him.
‘Because you buggered off. Because you just buggered off and left her.’
‘Or,’ Henry said, ‘to put it in William-speak, because soon after Tilly stopped fucking me, she started fucking you?’ He leaned back. He was almost smiling. ‘Sorry, mate,’ he said, ‘but as they say out here, you are so busted.’
On Sunday morning, they hired inline skates in Central Park. They were both hungover and, by mutual consent, unable to talk any further on the central subject, or to find any other topic. At three o’clock the previous morning, William had rolled into Henry across the charcoal-grey bed and said he thought they ought to get married. Henry said married meant sharing bathrooms so was out of the question. They’d fallen asleep with their backs to each other while the reddish glow from the New York night fell on them in neat pools through the portholes.
‘Explain to me,’ William said at one point in their trawl through the mid-town bars. ‘Tell me what it is with Gillon, what’s got you about Gillon—’
‘She’s open with me,’ Henry said.
‘But Tilly—’
‘I don’t want to make comparisons, but Tilly wasn’t open. Tilly was all mixed messages. Tilly wanted me to understand everything, by osmosis, even when the message had changed one hundred per cent from the last conversation. Gillon can explain herself to me. I don’t mean she’s asking me to carry her, or even help her – in fact she is virtually impossible to help – but she’s, well, she’s making it easier for me to read the map.’
‘I thought Southern girls—’
‘This is not a typical Southern girl.’
‘Of course not.’
‘William,’ Henry said, ‘I do not have to explain myself to you. Tilly is wonderful, I shall never think of her as anything other than wonderful, and Gillon may, by comparison, seem to your crude eye less obviously wonderful. I can’t tell you why I feel about Gillon as I do, or why I don’t any longer feel about Tilly as I used to. You can’t, you blockhead, make someone love you. God knows, Will, why I’m here with you now when you are such an asshole. Such a sanctimonious asshole.’
‘Aren’t you jealous?’ William said.
Henry stared.
‘Jealous?’
‘Of me and Tilly.’
Henry leaned against the nearest wall.
‘God help me.’
‘I don’t mind Susie being in Spain,’ William said, ‘but I’d rather she wasn’t screwing around all the same.’
Henry stood unsteadily upright and peered at William.
‘Tilly is definitely too good for you.’
William nodded.
‘I know.’
‘I’m too good for you too.’
‘You bloody aren’t,’ William said with energy. ‘You’re a bloody tosser.’ He raised his vodka glass. He said, in a different tone, ‘You know what?’
‘What?’
‘These girls, all these girls. D’you know what they’re looking for? They’re looking for perfection. That’s what they want. Perfection. But there isn’t perfection, is there? All there is, Henry, is blokes like you and me.’
Now, weaving unsteadily along the asphalted paths of Central Park, William looked at the other people inline skating. A lot of them were men, men shepherding flocks of darting children, men in pairs, men moving purposefully forward as if determined to break the speed and distance records they had set themselves the day before. If you looked at these men, William thought, they weren’t very different from Henry or himself, all probably wanting the same kinds of things and fearing the same kinds of things while struggling to negotiate with each other, with women, with children. He glanced across at Henry. Henry’s face was set, as if he was either concentrating very hard or thinking about something quite different. Perhaps he was thinking about Gillon. Despite everything he had said, William discovered he felt a small respect for Henry’s feelings for Gillon – not least, for the evident privacy of them. He bladed a little closer to Henry.
‘OK, mate?’
Henry glanced at him. He jerked one thumb in the air.
‘OK.’
Chapter Sixteen
Tilly made an appointment to see her editor. Her editor, a man in his late forties with a degree in art history from the University of Edinburgh, kept his door open in an atmosphere of easy informality. This worked admirably most of the time except that, when it was necessary to discuss anything delicate or serious, Miles’s open door and laid-back breezy manner made it difficult to seem other than over-solemn, even theatrical, by comparison. Tilly sent him an e-mail. She typed, ‘Need five minutes of your time behind closed doors.’ Miles wrote back, ‘Why only five minutes? Come at noon.’
At twelve Tilly stopped what she was doing, didn’t touch her hair, left her spectacles on and presented herself in Miles’s doorway. He was on the telephone.
‘No,’ he was saying, ‘no. The printing date can’t be changed. That’s a given.’
He looked up and made an elaborate swinging gesture with his free arm. Tilly closed the door behind her.
‘Sorry,’ Miles said into the telephone, ‘can’t do any more. Your problem.’
Tilly pulled a chair away from the wall and sat down on it. She looked at the photograph on his desk of Miles’s ex-wife and their children, and the adjacent photograph of Miles’s current girlfriend and her dog. The girlfriend had her arms round the dog’s neck.
‘Sorry,’ Miles said again. ‘Sorry. But bye. Ring me when you’ve worked it out. Bye.’ He put the telephone down.
He said to Tilly, ‘I fear the worst.’
‘Yes,’ Tilly said.
‘People only shut that door if they’re leaving or pregnant or both.’
‘I’m not pregnant.’
‘You’re not leaving, either,’ Miles said.
‘I have to. I must. I’m going round in circles.’
‘Yes,’ Miles said, ‘you could probably do your job and my job before lunch. But you’re not going until you’ve got somewhere to go to.’
‘How do you know I haven’t?’
‘You don’t have the right look about you. I don’t know much about the world of work, but I do know that we are all much more employable if we are employed already.’
‘Miles,’ Tilly said, ‘I have got to make some kind of move, I have got to do something, or I shall go mad.’
‘But not the wrong thing. You’ll only take the same baggage with you. And,’ he said, leaning forward, ‘speaking as a divorced man, I can tell you that if your personal life has hit the rocks, the last thing you need to jettison is work.’
Tilly looked down at her lap. She wanted to tell him – not because he was Miles, particularly, but because he was another human being and the moment was right, at least, for her – that she felt that she had been circling for ever, going round and round like a plane looking for somewhere to land, and that if she stayed as she was, endlessly circling and looking, she might just run out of fuel. There’s a difference, she wanted to say, between temporary malaise and a deep, powerful instinct for necessary change: there’s a difference, too, between surviving loss and trying to grow beyond it.
Instead, she said, still looking at her lap, ‘This isn’t sudden, Miles. And it isn’t frivolous.’
‘I wouldn’t dare to suggest either.’ He leant back in his chair. He glanced briefly at the photograph of his girlfriend and her dog, almost as if to gain sanction for his next remark, and then he said, ‘Might I suggest a compromise?’
Tilly screwed her face up.
‘I hate them. I make them all the time—’
‘Three months,’ Miles said. ‘You look for another job for three months. I work out how to replace you by not actually replacing you, for three months.’
Tilly said uncertainly, ‘Suppose we don’t coincide—’
‘Then we say so.’
She nodded.
‘Where will you go?’ Miles said.
‘Anywhere. Radio, televisio
n, publishing—’
‘All the usual suspects.’
‘We’re supposed to have so much choice, aren’t we,’ Tilly said. She stood up. ‘We’re supposed to have more choice than anyone has ever had, personally or professionally, before. But we still go round, don’t we, like hamsters on wheels, doing the same stuff, wanting the same things, dogged by the same doubts and fears—’ She stopped.
He looked up at her. He was plainly thinking about something else.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Three months. Leave the door open when you go, would you?’
Tilly walked back down the short corridor to her own office. On the way, Megan, who dealt with selling advertising space on Arts and People, emerged from the alcove where the photocopier and the water fountain lived, and said there was someone waiting to see Tilly.
‘I’ve put her in your office.’
‘I wasn’t expecting anyone.’
‘She’s a friend of yours,’ she said. ‘She said she knew you weren’t expecting her. I hope you don’t mind.’
Tilly looked at Megan. She wore spectacles and her thick curly dark hair was bunched up behind her head and secured with a ruched band of orange velvet. Her expression was anxious.
‘No,’ Tilly said, ‘of course not. Thanks.’
In her office, crouched on a chair and wearing purple-tinted sunglasses, was Susie. Tilly closed the door behind her and leaned against it. Susie didn’t look up.
‘What’s happened?’ Tilly said.
Susie hunched deeper against the chair back.
‘It didn’t work out.’
‘Five weeks you gave it—’
‘I knew after five days,’ Susie said. ‘It was horrible.’
‘What kind of horrible?’
‘All expats,’ Susie said. ‘Hardly any Spanish and the Spanish there were just ripping us off.’ She paused. ‘Can’t blame them, though. We were evil.’
‘I thought,’ Tilly said, ‘that evil is what you went for.’
Susie roused herself a little. She looked at Tilly through her purple lenses.
‘Not all day and all night,’ she said. ‘Not twenty-four seven. Not everyone just out of it all the time and bloody nicking my money.’
‘Did they?’
‘Vivi took three hundred quid. Vivi.’
‘Why did you have three hundred quid lying around to nick, for heaven’s sake?’
Susie shrugged.
‘I was going to bank it. I was going to.’
Tilly moved away from the door and sat down at her desk. She looked at her computer screen. There were three new e-mails. After this morning, she was not sure she wanted another e-mail for a very long time.
‘You don’t want me here,’ Susie said. ‘Do you?’
Tilly went on staring at the screen.
‘It’s not that I don’t want you,’ Tilly said, ‘it’s more that I’m a bit taken aback to see you again so soon, and I don’t honestly know what I can do to help you right now.’
‘The flat—’
‘Alicia is in the flat. The girl from sales and promotion here. I told you.’
‘You think,’ Susie said, her voice aggrieved, ‘you think I’ve got what I deserved, don’t you? You think I had it coming to me, don’t you?’
Tilly looked at her.
‘No.’
‘Then why no reaction? You don’t even seem to care. You haven’t even shouted. You’re not even surprised—’
‘It isn’t you,’ Tilly said.
‘What isn’t me?’
‘It’s not that I’m not sorry about what’s happened. It’s not that I’m not interested. It’s just that I’ve got a lot to cope with myself.’
Susie began to grope on the floor beside her for a striped raffia basket.
‘I’ll go—’
‘I had to see my boss just now,’ Tilly said. She paused, and then she said, in a rush, as if unintentionally, ‘And I got an e-mail this morning. From Henry.’
Susie paused, still stooped over her raffia bag.
‘Henry—’
‘He said,’ Tilly said, ‘that he should probably have told me this weeks ago, but he hadn’t until he was sure his feelings were serious, and now they are and yes, he is seeing someone else and it’s Gillon.’
‘Wow,’ Susie said faintly.
‘Yes.’
‘Was that—’
‘What?’
‘Was that going on here?’
‘Don’t know,’ Tilly said. ‘Don’t think so.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Nothing,’ Tilly said angrily. She brushed her hands across her face as if to banish any tears there might be.
Susie stood up, pulling her bag up into her arms as if it were a puppy.
‘They’re all shits, aren’t they?’
Tilly said nothing.
‘Doesn’t matter what you do for them,’ Susie said, ‘doesn’t matter what you feel, they just—’ She broke off, then she said, ‘Sorry I came.’
Tilly said, ‘Sorry I can’t help. Really sorry.’
Susie began to move towards the door. Her feet were bare and brown in little jewelled sandals and the flesh was mauve-tinged in the chill of an early English spring. Tilly glanced at them. They looked simply pathetic, forlorn in their sham tinselly bravery.
‘You can have the sofa,’ Tilly said. ‘Come back to the flat and have the sofa.’
‘It’s OK,’ Susie said uncertainly.
‘I mean it.’
‘I’ll—’ Susie stopped, and then she said, her hand on the doorknob, ‘I’ll go and see William, maybe.’
‘William—’
‘Yeah.’ She gave a little toss of her head. ‘Might even say sorry.’
‘Not sure,’ Tilly said slowly.
‘Not sure about what?’
‘About seeing William—’
Susie gripped her bag.
‘Why shouldn’t I see William?’
Tilly made herself smile.
‘No reason. Go and see him. Go and see William.’
Susie opened the door. She adjusted her bag and slung it on her shoulder.
‘I will,’ she said. Her tone was defiant. ‘I’m going to.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Corinne said, for the eighth time in an hour, ‘but Mr Ward’s in a meeting. And Mr Selway’s out on an appointment. Can I take a message?’
She looked down at her message pad. Five callers had left messages for William, one had hung up and one – the best prospective new account for some weeks – had said don’t bloody bother. Corinne had written this down, verbatim. She thought William ought to see what happened when he went haring out of the office without his mobile – very unlike him – just because that little tart Susie had turned up in a state and dragged him off with her. Corinne had been appalled to see her, flipping into the office dressed for the beach pretty nearly, without a smile or a civil word. There were indeed words for girls like Susie in Corinne’s book, and none of them were nice. To Corinne, Susie represented everything that was both cheap and threatening in other women, and when she had gone off to Spain, Corinne had not only been relieved but had also been triumphantly certain that that would be the fitting end of her. Her departure had, of course, left the way open for Tilly, a way that had-oh God help us, men - been immediately taken up by William. But even Corinne, in the half-acknowledged confusion of her feelings for William, could see that while she might resent Tilly, she couldn’t despise her as she so heartily, luxuriously had despised Susie. When Susie came into the office – bare feet, in mid-March-and, without even glancing at Corinne, swung straight in to see William, Corinne felt all the old contempt and fear surging up in her throat again, like bile. She looked down at her message pad again, and underlined the word ‘bloody’. It was her grandfather’s favourite word. Corinne sometimes thought it was the only adjective he knew.
When William finally reappeared after an hour and twenty minutes, he looked dreadful. He looked, Corinne thought, like h
er dad looked when he’d put too much money, furtively, on a horse race, and his horse had fallen in the first furlong. She glanced at him without mercy.
‘You forgot your mobile.’
He stared at her. He patted his jacket pockets.
‘I didn’t—’
‘You did.’ She nodded towards his desk through the open door. ‘It’s in there. I haven’t touched it.’
‘Fuck,’ William said.
Corinne tore the top sheet off her message pad and held it out to him.
‘Eight calls, six messages. Looks like the Intertel people weren’t too pleased not to get you.’
William looked down at the messages in his hand.
‘I’ll get back to them. I’ll call them.’
He moved towards his office. In the doorway, he turned and looked back at Corinne.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
She shrugged. The telephone rang again.
‘Shouldn’t have thought,’ she said, pressing buttons, ‘it was me you need to say sorry to. Good afternoon, Ward and Selway Despatch. How can I help you?’
‘What did you tell her?’ Tilly said. She was still at her desk. In front of her, the far side of it, William slumped in the chair that Susie had been in, that morning.
‘What do you think?’
‘I need to know,’ Tilly said steadily, ‘precisely how you described it. I need to know what you said’
William shifted.
‘I said we had a relationship. I said we’d slept together.’
‘Slept—’
‘No,’ William said, ‘I said we were sleeping together.’
‘Oh.’
‘Well, we are.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s when she lost it,’ William said. ‘That’s when she started screaming. She called me everything under the sun.’ He paused. ‘And you, I’m afraid.’ He leaned forward, propping his elbows on his knees. ‘She wanted me to kind of take her in. She wanted me to overlook this whole Spanish business and – well, look after her. She thought I’d pick up the pieces. She thought she could just move in with me. She thought I’d have forgotten how she behaved.’
‘She’s been frightened,’ Tilly said distantly. ‘She’s been badly frightened.’
Girl From the South (v5) Page 22
