‘So, you still serious about her?’ She does not look into his eyes.
‘Did I ever say I wasn’t?’
‘So why are you here?’
He frowns. The question tires him.
‘Why?’ she insists.
‘Because I am.’
She snorts, stands up again. ‘Sorry, Graham. That’s not good enough any more.’
‘Because,’ his mind scrambles sluggishly. ‘Because we’re mates – you invited me. What do you mean?’
She gathers up some pencils from the floor.
‘What was that all about? Kissing me, making love to me –’
‘Didn’t hear any complaints.’
She presses her lips together, runs her fingers through her hair, making it stick up in crazy spikes. ‘No,’ she says in a low voice, ‘you’re very good, I’ll give you that. But I sort of thought maybe things weren’t going well with Cassie, maybe that’s why you were here –’
‘No it’s fine.’
‘So if it’s fine –?’ She gestures at the bed again. He shrugs again.
‘Ha!’ She shakes her head in a sort of triumph. ‘Do you know, I pity her.’
‘What? He starts to feel pressure. Does not need pressure. Can’t take it.
‘Does she know you’re here?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Do you want her? Do you,’ she hesitates, gulps as if swallowing something too big, ‘are you still in love with her?’
‘Guess so.’
She narrows her eyes at him. ‘Then what the – Dickens are you doing here? Get out of my bed.’
He stares up at her. Dickens?
‘Get out!’ She points at the door.
‘OK, OK.’ He shifts about a bit, glances at the little clock by the bed. The bus doesn’t go for a couple of hours.
‘I’m going to my studio,’ she says, giving up on him. ‘When I get back please be gone.’ She shrugs on a shaggy purple coat that doubles her size and slings her bag over her shoulder.
‘Jas,’ he says, as she makes for the door.
She stops, turns. ‘What?’
‘You’ve forgotten one of your eyes.’
She snorts, opens her mouth to speak, shuts it again. She grins unwillingly, goes back to the mirror to complete her make-up.
‘OK?’
‘Fantastic.’
She leaves, slamming the door, making her mobiles rattle.
He listens to her feet clattering down three flights of stairs and the front door banging and then lies down again, stretches between the cooling sheets. Are you in love with her? she’d said. And he tests the idea, prodding at it to see if it’s alive. Yes, it is, he is. He ponders this, watching the mirror reflections on the ceiling, listening to the fidget of the mobiles. Maybe Jas has a point then. Why is he here?
Because why not? is the only thing that comes to him. Cassie doesn’t like it but she’s number one and she knows that. Jas knows that. He hardly ever actually lies.
He remembers how, soon as he saw Cassie, he’d had to have her, and how new that had felt. He’d had so many others: one-night stands, holiday flings, a couple of serious lovers, Jas on and off for years since college. He just loved women, talking to them, being among their stuff, getting intimate with them – not necessarily sexually, not always, sometimes it was just good enough to hear their secrets. Sometimes he almost wished he was a woman, though he wouldn’t be able to fuck them then so that wouldn’t work. But when he first saw Cassie it was different. Something happened. Not in his heart so much as in his guts, his bones. If he hadn’t managed to get her he would have been changed anyway. Never even thought of settling before. Settling for one person or one life. Why should he? Settle. The word rubs him up the wrong way, makes him itch.
He’d been at college, teaching. An afternoon life-class. Cold afternoon, maybe May. Petals from a flowering cherry had blown and stuck themselves to the wet window. The model was a burly guy, so hairy that some of the efforts were looking like bears. The students had been hard at it, holding up pencils, framing with their angled fingers and thumbs, sketching away. The air had been charged with concentration, the rub of charcoal, breaths held. And she’d come barging though the double doors, looked at the model, flushed, said, ‘Whoops!’ and disappeared again leaving him with a dazed impression of pink and gold; neat blue denim arse.
He’d shaken his head, made some crack, but after the class he’d packed up quickly, shooing the students out instead of hanging about to gas as usual. He’d gone to the entrance and there she was, talking to someone in a leather jacket and he’d felt something, Christ, he had almost felt jealous. He’d approached, heard her laugh and say, ‘Next week then.’ The guy she’d been talking to walked off. She’d looked at her watch and looped a strand of hair behind her ear. A milky opal stud had gleamed at him from her ear lobe.
‘Hi,’ he’d said.
She turned. ‘Hi? Oh, sorry about that. Was looking for AR2 – but do they have numbers on the doors?’ She pulled a face.
‘Yes they do,’ he said.
‘Oh!’ She grinned. ‘Well I didn’t see.’ She’d wrinkled her nose and that was when the something happened in his bones. There was a gap between her front teeth that made her look kind of goofy. Her skin was dappled gold, only freckles but they were like sunspots shimmering through clear water. He shook himself.
‘No sweat,’ he said. ‘You teach here?’
‘Started today.’
‘Art?’
‘Organic Gardening. New class – if I can get it off the ground. Ha ha. Hope I didn’t embarrass the model!’ Her lips were so pink he wanted to ask her, is that real? It looked like the surface of natural skin but very pink. He wanted to put his finger out and touch – see if it smudged.
‘I’m Graham,’ he said.
‘Cassie.’
Cassie. He liked that. Suited her. Maybe it was just the whiteness of her teeth that made her lips look quite so pink. He realised he was staring at her mouth and looked away, down at the swell of breast inside her shirt.
‘Well, see you then,’ she’d said and grinned, walked off, fringed bag bumping on her hip, blonde hair halfway down her back. Christ. He even liked the way she walked. He’d hung about for a minute then followed her out into a scattery rain. But she’d gone. He’d realised he hadn’t noticed her eyes. Usually the first thing to get him. But he’d known they would be blue. They must be, to go with that pink and white and gold.
He turns over, rubs his face in Jas’s patchouli-smelling pillow. He’s never seen her mad before. She’s so unlike Cassie. Not beautiful. But very alive and sharp – almost feral with her squinty brown eyes, black eyebrows and sticky reddish hair. She’s started looking older, lines round her eyes when she screws them up against the smoke. But looking older suits her. He’s known her twenty years, since art school. She knows his parents, he knows hers, been in her childhood bedroom with the old scribble-faced dolls her mum won’t throw away. And now she’s turned him out. Jas! But she’s his mate. His oldest mate. And he didn’t exactly drag her into bed. He’s never pretended anything is any different from how it is.
Cassie said he had to get his act together. You’re thirty-six, she said. It’s time to grow up. That was last night and he wonders now if that is why he’s here. But now Jas is at it too. He groans, hugs a pillow. He ought to leave Cassie. She’s so unlike anyone before. She’s a proper person with a cottage and a cat. A routine. She gardens and cooks and has a more-or-less regular job. And soon, he knows it’s looming, soon she’ll want a kid. That has never been on his agenda.
Last time she’d said it he’d headed for the hills, or gone off and slept on a few floors anyway, but he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Her skin; the way he felt when she took him in her arms; her eyes – He gets up, goes to the window, draws the curtains back, stands, naked, looking at the sunny street, a sycamore tree, leaves just turning yellow; the dusty tops of cars, the crowns of a couple of heads moving below him.
A kid. Well, maybe. A little girl like Cassie to ride round on his shoulders. That could be cool.
It had bugged him after their first meeting that he hadn’t noticed her eyes. He’d thought about her all that week, deciding what to say. No chat-up lines, no small talk. He planned to go straight up to her and say something like, ‘I think you’re gorgeous. Are you single? And even if you’re not, will you meet me for a drink?’ And if she blew him out? It was a risk worth taking. How often does that happen? That certainty, just from the look of a woman, the way she walks, the way she tucks her hair behind her ear.
But she hadn’t shown up for the next few weeks. He’d told Jas – they’d split up by then – about her. When he’d described her, Jas had groaned. ‘Not long blonde hair? God, Graham, what else? No, let me guess. Legs to here?’ she’d pointed to her armpits, ‘and eyes like what, like fucking cornflowers? Can’t you give it a rest? It won’t drop off, you know.’
Weeks later when he’d almost got over her, almost convinced himself she couldn’t have been as great as all that, she’d walked past the art-room window and mid-sentence he’d dashed out of the room and called, ‘Cassie!’
She’d turned, puzzlement on her face giving way to recognition. ‘Yeah? Oh hi.’
He’d walked straight up and looked her in the eyes. ‘Grey-green,’ he’d said, surprised.
‘Sorry?’
And that was the start of it. He pads into Jas’s shower, tiny cubicle off the bedroom, cluttered with plastic bottles, splashed with henna stains, hairs snarled in the plughole. Cassie would go mental if she could see. Or if her bathroom looked like that. For the first time in his life, he’s started cleaning the bath. She does not know what a step that is for him. How against the grain it goes for him to lean over with a cloth and scrub the bath. He stands under the spray, soaping the smell of Jas away. He should go back, be there when Cassie gets back. And probably should not do this again.
Three
Cassie gets off the bus. Just getting dark, birds fluting in the trees, leaves dripping. She hitches her bag over her shoulder, crosses the road and starts down the lane, straining her eyes to see if there are any lights on in the cottage. If he’s there. Her feet are tired in the stupid shoes, the heels give slightly with each step, making her sink as if walking on soft sand. If it wasn’t wet she’d take them off and walk barefoot. The lights are all blazing, the curtains undrawn. Her heart thuds warily against her ribs. Best to go straight in and tell him where she’s been and what she wants.
She opens the door, kicks off the shoes, sticks her feet into cool friendly clogs. He comes to the door to greet her. ‘I’ve missed you,’ he says.
‘What!’
He hugs her. He has a clean shirt on, smells clean, though of unfamiliar soap. She pulls away and looks at him. Shiny black hair pulled back in its ponytail, face smoothly shaved.
‘What’s up?’ she says. ‘Going somewhere?’
He shakes his head, smiles and, as always, her heart lurches like it’s coming unhinged. Long green eyes, black lashes, sexy lines crinkling.
She shoves him away. ‘What do you mean you missed me? I’ve only been gone a day.’
‘I’ve cooked you a meal,’ he says, ‘been at it hours.’
‘Not my birthday, is it?’
She follows him into the kitchen. No smell of cooking, but plenty of peelings and splashes, a sink full of pots. A bottle of red wine open on the table, two glasses.
‘Sit down,’ he says, pouring.
‘No, I need a pee – I’ll just change.’
She climbs the stairs, takes off the skirt and tights, pulls on a pair of jeans and some woolly socks. She goes into the bathroom and stares at herself in the mirror, frowning and seeing the lines it makes. Mascara smudged owlishly, a greasy sheen around her nose. She blows her nose to get rid of the black London bogeys.
She hears him shout, ‘Shit!’ and watches her own face grimace. More lines. She has that fair skin that ages early, like her mum. Patsy’s already got tramlines on her forehead, but then she has had a baby. Graham forgot to turn the oven on, she guesses. For a change. She takes the clips out of her hair and shakes it loose – warm waves against her face. This is her home and she loves it. Her bathroom with the fingers of ivy tapping the tiny window. Her garden out there in the darkness. Her bedroom with its low ceiling and view of wooded hills. If he goes it will all still be here. It won’t kill her.
She pulls on a sweater and goes down the narrow curve of stair. ‘What’s up?’
He’s rolling a fag on the kitchen table. ‘Frigging oven wasn’t on, was it? So it’ll be a while.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sort of curry.’
‘No, I mean what’s all this in aid of?’
‘Make a baby with me.’
Her forehead rises into her hair. ‘What?’
He licks his Rizla and gleams at her. ‘You heard.’
She gets a sensation like warm sand trickling between her ribs. If he’d said that years ago. If she could trust him. She suppresses the smile that wants to plump her cheeks, the shred of her that wants to rip both their jeans off and get down to it right now, on the kitchen table.
Instead she picks up her wine glass, twiddles the stem between her fingers. She takes a breath. ‘I need to talk to you.’
‘Oh no!’ He lights his fag, leans back and squints through the smoke. ‘Where’ve you been anyway?’
‘London, I told you, that’s what I want to talk to you about.’ On the table there’s an envelope he’s doodled on: a tree, he usually doodles trees or women’s bodies. This tree is sinuous and bare but for one dangling fruit. She puts her glass down and scrunches her hands together till they hurt. He gazes at her, waiting. He looks almost anxious.
She takes a breath. ‘I’ve been for an interview.’
He exhales a long plume of smoke. ‘You’re not going to work in London?’
‘It was an interview for a job in Australia – for both of us.’
He laughs as if it’s a joke and then stops. His turn to stare.
‘A night of surprises, eh?’ she says.
The cat flips in through the cat flap and launches himself at her lap, turning, claws prickling through her jeans, till he’s comfortable. She strokes his white head as she tells him about Larry, about the job.
‘But,’ he says into the long silence that follows, ‘I never said I wanted to go to Australia.’ He sounds wounded.
‘No,’ she says. ‘I know. Graham, how long have we been together?’
He squashes the life out of his dog-end and thinks. ‘Two, three years?’
‘Nearly four.’ She takes another deep breath, feels like she’s about to jump from a plane unsure of her parachute. ‘You know I do want to have a baby.’ She holds up her hand to stop his response. ‘Seriously. I’m thirty-one. I want to have a baby when I’m thirty-two. Before thirty-three anyway.’
‘I know. I’d love a kid.’
‘Since when?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘What happened this afternoon?’
‘Nothing. Just – came to me. Shazam.’
‘But – what about last month when you went out for a paper and disappeared for a week? Or July? No – don’t. I don’t want to hear any excuses or anything. I want you to be here for me. Like a proper partner. A proper committed partner. No more flings. No more disappearing off. If you can’t do that then –’ She slices her hand through the air.
‘Cass!’ His green eyes spark, ‘You don’t mean that.’
‘I do.’
‘You don’t.’ He smiles but she won’t let it infect her. Will not let him charm her any more.
‘That’s what Australia’s about.’
A faint smell of curry is beginning to wisp from the oven but her stomach balls up against it.
‘If you’re serious about me, us, then we go together. Just you and me. No Jas or whoever to run to. Give that poor woman a chance to meet someone else.’
He looks at her suspiciously. ‘Have you two been talking?’
‘Give us time to – just be together – just us. Prove to me that you can do it. You could paint, maybe get back on track that way too. You seem a bit – aimless, lately.’
‘No way.’ He stands up, his chair grating against the floor. His raised voice is so rare that Cat opens his eyes and blinks, lashes the tip of his tail. ‘I don’t want to go to Australia. No way. No. Sorry. You can’t organise me like that.’
The cat jumps off Cassie’s lap, maybe thinking Graham’s going to feed him. He stretches, and arches, white tail quivering.
‘OK, then,’ Cassie says, softly, ‘That’s it.’
‘Don’t be so stupid. I love you.’
‘You never say it at the right time.’ She will not look up. ‘I love you too but it’s not enough.’
‘You want me to leave?’
‘Yes.’ The word falls like a stone from her mouth and rolls into a corner. He goes as if to speak, changes his mind and leaves the room, the door clicking shut abruptly behind him. She listens to his feet on the stairs, right up to the attic where he has his studio and most of his stuff. She stares for a moment at the door, at his squashed fag-end, at a long splash of yellow sauce on the oven door. Whose soap does he smell of? she wonders. The cat miaows and rubs against her shin. She tops up her wine and reaches for the phone. She’ll speak to Patsy.
Four
A bird screeches and Graham tries to peel himself from his dream, but the sound insists. Where is he? Light all wrong and hot so hot –
But then he gets it. The other side of the tin wall, someone moving about. The guy called Larry. The sizzle of something hitting hot fat. Bacon maybe. His mouth floods, stomach buckles with a pang of hunger.
He peels himself away from Cassie, the sticky heat between their chests. She yawns and turns on to her back, stretches, creaking the bed frame outrageously. He nuzzles her shoulder, the salty skin.
As Far as You Can Go Page 2
