I wonder if children have a capacity to ignore the peeling paint, the fixed shotguns on the rifle range, the bent, blunt darts that haven’t a hope in hell of connecting with any of the playing cards and hoops that are too small to fit over the glass bowls of the fish who have lost the will to live.
Thomas is smiling broadly, and I’m so relieved because he has seemed so down recently. And it’s hardly surprising, I know. I hug him to me. “Okay?” I say.
He nods. I miss the children so much, I can’t tell you. When I’m not with them, there’s a gaping hole inside me that, try as he might, Christian just isn’t able to fill. No one else can.
Elliott is beside himself with joy. Anything that has the potential to be life-threatening, extremely dirty and involves spending lots of other people’s money hits the spot in Elliott’s book. Every single thing we have passed so far Elliott has wanted to have a go on, whether it turns him the wrong way up, shoots him sideways or just simply tries to terrify him. My son is indiscriminate in his desire to be shaken about every which way. As you’ll probably guess, that’s exactly how I’m feeling without the need to part with a pound for a fairground ride.
“Let’s go on the dodgems,” Christian suggests. He’s entering into the spirit of this very gamely, and I love him all the more for it. “Elliott,” he says, “come with me.” And before I can say anything, he snatches my youngest son’s hand and they race to the dodgems, which are idling in between bouts.
“Come on, Tom!” Thomas and I chase after them, and Tanya paddles in our wake. Thomas grabs a dodgem, easing himself into the driver’s seat, and exchanges the pound I’ve given him for a token with the grubby man who’s jumping between the cars with the ease of someone who has done it for too many years. “Want to go on with Tom?” I ask my daughter. She shakes her head and lurks at the side of the rink, leaning insolently against one of the brightly painted supports, arms hugging her leather jacket around her.
I jump in beside Thomas, and a man with all the clarity of diction of a British Rail announcer mutters that “We’re off!” And we are, shrieking and screaming at the other cars as I direct Thomas to smash into as many dodgems as we can hunt down. Never has being a back-seat driver been so much fun. For a moment I forget where I am and who I am, caring about nothing but bracing myself against the pain of another bump. Smashing legitimately into other cars is very therapeutic. And then I see Tanya out of the corner of my eye. She is watching Christian with a strange expression on her face and it jolts me as surely as my lover’s dodgem hitting us squarely in the side does, that Tanya, in her own teenage way, feels the same about Christian as I do. The man collecting money on the dodgems is watching Tanya, but she is oblivious to him. Her eyes are following one face. A face that is laughing and smiling and shouting encouragement to Elliott, roaring in triumph, and is completely unaware of her. And I can’t express the emotion I feel when I realize that Christian is closer to her age than he is to mine. How would I feel if she brought someone like Christian home? It isn’t beyond the bounds of possibility, let’s face it.
The dodgems grind to an abrupt halt, and we unfurl ourselves from the cramped cars unscathed. Physically, at least. My back is aching and so is my head, and we’ve only been here ten minutes.
“Let’s go on the Ghost Train,” Elliott yells, and we splash across the mud to some cracked plastic ghosts that glow yellow in the gloomy light. “Coming, Tanya?” I shout as we all leap into one of the rickety carts shaped like a coffin.
“I’ll wait here,” she says. And I hope it is fear of being seen by her friends at somewhere so tragically uncool that is making her hang back. We trundle into a tunnel lined with lime-green fur fabric and what appear to be old sheets, and Elliott starts to vent forth earsplitting screams before anything has happened. And I try to push down the feeling that this cheap and tacky ghost train, with its lurking Lurex phantoms and macabre, staged shocks, holds infinitely less terror for me than my daily life.
I am broke. Utterly and absolutely. And I suppose it wouldn’t have mattered so much if I hadn’t just rendered myself gainfully unemployed. We have eaten toffee apples, candy floss and hot dogs. In that order. We have been on the dodgems, the Ghost Train, the Twister, the Sky Rocket, the Wild Mouse and the Thunder Racer. Tanya is clutching a pile of moth-eaten soft toys, a WWF poster featuring an extremely dubious greased-up orange wrestler called The Rock and a goldfish, yet to be christened, which is not looking well already.
I am clinging on to a cup of warm, hairy-chested tea in a polystyrene cup and trying to get my center of gravity to agree to go back to where it belongs. The boys are drinking Coke and are pink-cheeked and grinning. And the rain has held off. Mostly. I think, with one notable exception, you could count this as a fairly successful day.
“Let’s go on the Waltzer!” Elliott shouts.
“You’ve been on enough,” I remind him, ever the voice of reason.
“Oh. Just one more.” My son pouts like Marilyn Monroe.
“Elliott, you’ll be sick.”
“I won’t.”
“You will. You’ve just had Coke and hot dogs.”
“Just one last thing,” he begs.
“I’ll take him,” Christian ventures.
“You’ll be sick too,” I warn.
He grins. “I promise I won’t.”
“Okay.” Elliott takes hold of Christian’s hand and they exchange smiles, and you won’t believe how much that means to me. “Do you want to go too, Thomas?” But my older son shakes his head. Thomas has more sense than the rest of us put together.
“One go!” I say sternly, trying too late to reassert some sort of authority in the face of being viewed as a pushover.
“We won’t be long,” Christian assures me, and they head off to be twirled and whirled again.
“Shall we go and watch?” We follow them, and by the time we reach the Waltzer, Christian and Elliott are trapped in one of the cars by a big metal bar and are meandering slowly round the track as the ride picks up speed. Elliott’s knuckles are white from gripping. Christian has his arm round him, and my son is tucked into his side with a look on his face approaching ecstasy. We lean on the rails round the side and can feel the vibrations beneath our feet. Everything is clanking and rattling more than the chains in the Ghost Train, and I wonder how often any of these rides are checked for safety.
The ride picks up speed. Thudding music is pumping at some hideous volume out of the speakers above us. When I was a girl, Waltzer music always blared out “All Right Now” by Free, which still seems to have a certain melodious charm compared to this stuff. Sorry, I’m doing my mother again. “DO YOU WANT TO GO FASTER!” the man in the central control box shouts. The lights flash on and off, faster and faster. I hear Elliott scream, “Yes!” above everyone else. Their car comes round and they are a blur, huddled into one corner, hanging on for dear life and my stomach joins the lurching. “DO YOU WANT TO GO FASTER!” Elliott is virtually lying on the seat now, the car trying to vest itself of the insubstantial weight of his body. Christian has hold of him by his jacket. “Yeeeeeesssssss!” he shouts as he passes us. The ride seems endless, and just as I think I can bear it no longer, the lights cease flickering madly, the insane rattling slows to a series of worrying clonks and the cars instead of whirling like dervishes, spin as gracefully as ballerinas to a halt.
They stop just in front of us. Thomas rushes to open the bar. Christian is laughing and sitting Elliott upright. My little boy gets out of the car, gripping its sides as it starts to whirl again, and staggers toward me, his legs trembling like Slinkies and his face chalk white. His eyes appear to be rotating in his head. “That,” he says, “was absolutely brilliant!”
Christian gets out and comes up behind him grinning from ear to ear. I smile at him and want him to know that I really do appreciate how much effort he is putting into trying to get to know my children. Christian answers my smile—he knows how much this means to me. And I know that somehow this is all going
to work out all right. At that very moment, Elliott also turns round, smiling cheesily, and is promptly and heartily sick all over Christian’s trousers.
CHAPTER 50
Ed and Orla didn’t go to Budleigh Salterton. Mainly because neither of them were quite sure where it was. Instead, they went to Bath. Ed had this notion that Orla would enjoy it, being American and all that. If they didn’t get on, then surely there were plenty of Roman bits and pieces and ornate buildings to keep her happy? And Ali always said the shopping was great—which was something he never felt qualified to comment on. But it probably didn’t matter which side of the Atlantic a woman was born on to appreciate great shops.
They stayed in a hotel just on the outskirts. A comfortable thirteenth-century manor house in pale gold Bath stone set in its own grounds. Orla had nearly fainted with delight when they swooped into the gravel drive and wound their way up through a field full of miserable-looking cows huddling together in the rain, past a brimming duck pond to the iron-studded front door. She had nearly fainted with shock when they had been forced to walk on planks from the car park to the house because everywhere was so flooded. But then this had been the wettest winter on record and the records went back a fairly long way. This was not going to be a weekend for tramping through the countryside, and it was a shame because Ed hadn’t tramped anywhere for a while and had started to look forward to it. Or, at least, he’d started to look forward to it once he was out of Ali’s radar gaze. She had sussed straight away that this was no business trip, try to fool her, and himself, as he might. And he had felt so guilty, which was a bit rich, all things considered.
Ed had stayed here once before years ago when he’d been filming a promotional extravaganza for dog biscuits, of all things, to be screened in premier pet shops across the nation. So some things never change. The hotel had, though. Beyond recognition. It had been subjected to extensive refurbishment, and everything that had been faded with age and elegantly worn on his previous visit seemed to have been replaced with brand spanking new antique replicas.
They checked in and climbed the lurid carpet to the first floor and their room. Deciding that everyone in the thirteenth century must have been midgets, Ed ducked down through the low door that led to their bedroom. Carpet aside, the rooms were a definite improvement. A roaring log fire greeted them, and beyond that a four-poster bed complete with heavy silk drapes adorned the center of the room. The only small snag that Ed could see was that the bed was most definitely a double and not the twin beds he had requested when booking. Although, on reflection, it seemed a very stupid thing to do, to assume that two fully grown, emotionally stable and commitment-free adults were going to spend the night divided by a bedside table and a yard of carpet, ghastly patterned or not. But it was a daunting thought. How do you spend the night with someone, particularly in the carnal sense, that you’ve never even held hands with, let alone seen naked? This presumably was just another one of the taxing puzzles of our times. And one he’d only had to face once before, and that had been aided and abetted by copious amounts of local hooch, which had all but blotted out the memory of it. Ed’s mouth was suddenly dry. He could do with a drink now, come to think of it.
His one and only one-night stand had been a lesson to him in many ways, although Ali might not appreciate the educational value of it if he were to confess to her now or had done then. He’d seen too many of his friends and colleagues strike out to grasp the alluring flower of adultery only to have it turn to a stinging nettle in their hands. And a very expensive stinging nettle too.
He wondered if this little liaison was helping him one step further along to the divorce courts, and questioned his wisdom in agreeing to it. Perhaps he should have viewed Ali’s indiscretion as an educational jaunt, and then they might not have been in this situation.
He’d narrowly avoided seeing the lovely Nicola Jones naked too. She’d been rather more keen to disrobe herself in the kitchen than he’d thought appropriate for a nursery-school teacher. Not that he hadn’t wanted to see her minus her Laura Ashley, but he was so totally unprepared for it. Spontaneity and sex were definitely out of bounds since the children had arrived and it was hard getting his mind, and other parts of his body, back into leaping-around mode. And that was another thing. If it was difficult enough to find the opportunity to have sexual relations with your wife because of being interrupted by one or more bored and/or weeping children, just think how much the odds went up when you added a stranger to the equation. The kitchen table had just not been an option for him. He had tried to explain his predicament nicely, but Nicola had left in the early hours of the morning clearly feeling rejected at having had to chase him round the chairs. At least this setup—i.e., no children—was more conducive to a little adult fun should it be on offer.
Ed’s eyes traveled round the room. In lieu of a separate bathroom there was a Victorian enameled claw-foot bath in a corner of the room and a matching washstand complete with water pitcher and the added modern accoutrement of skillfully concealed Ideal Standard new millennium taps, for which Ed was truly grateful. There was no screen to separate it or hide behind—it just stood there sturdily slap bang in front of them. It looked like he was going to be seeing Orla naked long before bedtime. Thank God for small mercies that, at least, the loo wasn’t an open-plan affair too!
His companion dropped her small holdall to the floor. “This is just so English,” she said. Which Ed wasn’t awfully sure was a compliment these days. “I love it!”
Orla swept past him into the room, throwing herself onto the bed, which responded by enveloping her in its lacy coverlet. “It’s so romantic,” she breathed.
There was a bottle of champagne in a bucket of ice on the coffee table, rapidly getting warm in the face of the inferno of the log fire. Ed hadn’t had the forethought to order it, but he was glad that someone had.
“Champagne?” he suggested.
Orla propped herself up on an embankment of small, silky cushions stacked on the bed. “You are a wonderful man, Ed,” she breathed. “I’d love some.”
Ed set the two flutes on the tray beside them. He wondered what had happened in the intervening twenty years since he had last been on the dating scene. No one had ever shown the slightest bit of interest in dirty dancing with him then.
Orla kicked off her shoes.
Ed lifted the champagne from the bucket, wiped the ice water away with a cloth and a flourish. Perhaps a few gray hairs and a certain air of suave maturity was what women wanted these days? He smiled a sultry Roger Moore smile across the room.
Orla stripped off her coat and threw it to the floor. With her red lips pouting, she started to unbutton her blouse. “Bring it to bed,” she instructed throatily.
Ed’s nimble fingers froze on the bottle as his cork popped prematurely and shot straight across the room, knocking a grinning pot dog off the mantelpiece with one fell swoop.
They’d gone down to dinner late, the delights of Roman Bath in torrential rain having been forsaken for torrid pleasures of the flesh in a four-poster bed.
The dining room was filled with lovey-dovey couples holding hands across tables set for two. The restaurant was Egon Ronay–recommended and the food was sublime, but no one seemed to be doing much eating. The subdued lighting had been taken to coal-mine proportions—there were candles on the tables, candles in the alcoves, candles competing with the light from log fires at either end of the room. An azure-blue swimming pool housed in a tropical oasis of a conservatory adjoined the dining area, and candles shaped like lotus flowers floated serenely across its untroubled surface.
Orla smiled up at him. She looked lovely. And not a little flickery.
“You told Alicia this was a business trip?” she said.
“Not really. I just didn’t tell her it wasn’t.” Ed savored his wine. “Besides,” he admitted, “I wasn’t entirely sure myself.”
Orla slid her fingers into his. “But you’re sure now?”
“Yes,” he said
. Well, it seemed churlish not to, but the truth was he still wasn’t sure. Orla was beautiful. She was clever, looked great in a business suit and was very organized. What more could a man want in a woman?
Ed didn’t know, but he knew there was no buzz in his stomach like there should be. No stirring in his loins. Although he was wearing a slight smirk. But then he had just had sex—and pretty good sex—for the first time in weeks, and he was only human after all. He’d felt that with Nicola Jones too, but then the only woman who had ever made his stomach churn was Ali—and that wasn’t just with some of the meals she produced. Ed turned his attention back to his Dover sole.
“Are you going to tell her that we’re an item?”
Ed choked and sloshed down a gulp of mineral water. The other diners stopped to glare at him. “Bone,” he croaked, smiling weakly at the other tables.
“She needs to know.”
“Does she?” he said, dabbing his mouth with his napkin. “I don’t want to rush this.”
“She’ll find out soon enough,” Orla reasoned.
“Elliott will probably tell her.”
“I mean when you come to the States with me.”
Ed felt moved to choke again, but knew he couldn’t get away with blaming it on a fishbone twice.
“You are coming, aren’t you?”
Was this part of the deal? he wondered. Had it always been? And if it was, did that have to be a bad thing? Was there any reason why he and Orla couldn’t go on from here to make a great relationship? But then was it wise to rush into the first shoe shop you came to and buy the first pair you could grab without trying any others on?
“Harrison Ford is waiting, Ed,” she said. “And so am I.”
Making a mental note to kill Trevor, Ed raised his glass and clinked it to hers. Orla’s eyes flashed and blazed in the candlelight. A triumphant smile curled the corners of her mouth.
A Minor Indiscretion Page 24
