by Judy Astley
‘Well let me know, won’t you,’ Conrad said. ‘I’ll look in my diary and see if I’m free for the opening. Can’t wait to meet your new best friend.’
‘Look – why are you so negative? Why aren’t you happy for me? You’ve never been like this before when I used to show my work. Just because you’ve decided to give up on painting doesn’t mean that I have to, does it?’
‘No, no. You go ahead. Really. I’m pleased for you.’ He didn’t sound it. He picked up a pen and the sports section of the newspaper from the table and went into the sitting room without another word. She heard him switch the TV on and could hear the final overexcited moments of a horse race.
Sara packed the vegetables into a basket, shouted a breezy goodbye to Conrad and left the house. He could bloody whistle for a goodbye kiss if he was going to be like that. Was this how it was going to be from now on? Conrad behaving like a spoilt toddler? Guiltily, she’d lain awake and wondered if he’d seen the same new light in her that Lizzie had spotted. What was it the girls called it? A pash. Grown-ups didn’t have pashes, she’d told herself as she turned the pillow to the cool side and tried to sleep. Happily married women, proper good wives, definitely didn’t.
She had left the house early because she’d factored in time for a quick drink and a chat with Stuart first. She owed him a drink as thanks for the latest vegetable selection. Stuart was waiting for her at a table outside the pub, facing the Green. Other tables were occupied by pallid office workers who, as they talked to each other, couldn’t help turning their faces to the sun like flowers. How lucky I am, Sara thought as she went into the bar to collect the drinks, being able to choose to work at what I enjoy rather than having to be a corporate cog; how fabulous never to be losing the best part of the sunlit seasons stuck in an office and trying to care about marketing targets or how a project team should work as an autonomous cooperative. She’d never get her head round that kind of vocabulary, for one thing. She preferred lush, evocative colour words like Burnt Sienna, Vandyke Brown, Rose Madder, Lamp Black.
‘Here you are, Stuart, one pint of IPA and a bag of Quavers. And please can I ask you a question that you might think is a bit odd?’
‘Ask away, Sara. I have no secrets, as you know.’ His eyes sparkled naughtily at her. ‘I wouldn’t mind knowing yours, though.’
‘Another time!’ she said. ‘No really . . . this might sound odd but I really want to know. What are you like at home? How do the domestic dynamics work with you and Angie? Do you talk to each other a lot?’
‘Domestic dynamics?’ Stuart spluttered. ‘What kind of a dictionary have you swallowed?’
‘Oh you know what I mean – are you two still really good mates?’
‘Ah! Mating! Lovely word! I remember that . . .’ Stuart looked into the distance, dreamily. ‘It was in the days of our youth. BC. You know that term? It means Before Children and also in my case before teaching restoration car freaks where exactly to stick the Duckhams 20/50 Classic. These things take over your life. Especially your sex life.’
‘But Stuart, I’m not talking about sex or your spanking fantasies. Though I’d say a good start in the direction of getting those fulfilled would involve smelling of something slightly more fragrant than Swarfega.’
‘Hey! That’s workers’ perfume, that, toil and sweat and downtown dirty. Don’t you remember that Bruce Springsteen video? Don’t ask me which one . . . the one where he’s all blue-collar-mechanic lust . . . oh no, silly me, that was all of them. Didn’t that get the laydeez of the day going?’
‘Sadly not, Stuart. Sorry. I’m more of an Aerosmith woman. Steve Tyler acting filthy with a mike stand, that’s what got me warmed up. But no, I’m talking about how you and Angie tick over in the nest, you know, day to day. Do you still surprise each other, stimulate each other . . . and no, not in that sense! I mean, conversationally?’
Stuart picked at some oil trapped under his thumbnail. ‘Conversation . . . hmm – I think I remember that.’ He paused for a moment, his eyes following the tightly denimed bum of a blonde woman in killer heels. Sara smiled and waited, knowing exactly what his thought process was here. As the woman disappeared from sight his attention drifted back and he said, after some thought, ‘I suppose if you include saying things like “We’re running out of milk,” and “The cat’s been digging up the sweet peas again,” then yes, we do have conversations. But surprising ones, humdingers about politics and stuff? In-depth argument over favourite films? No, not really. Does anyone, after so many years? We know what each other thinks: what’s left by now to get your teeth into, except each other? We get along.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘But then I mostly get along to the allotments and she mostly gets along to her book group. Doesn’t everyone just muddle through? Oh and I get to use the leather paddle on her every third Saturday, if I’ve been good. She lets me know when she’s had enough, so if that passes for conversation, then yes – we do talk. Anyway,’ he challenged. ‘Why do you ask? Are you going to tell me that you and your beloved don’t even have a telly because it would get in the way of all those stimulating intellectual discussions you have night after night? Does your family sit around being intense, banging on about the demise of the known universe and the mysteries of Chinese foreign policy, while the rest of us slob out in front of Coronation Street?’
‘Oh yes – that’s us!’ Sara told him. ‘Chez Blythe-Hamilton is a hotbed of verbal gymnastics. Melvyn Bragg meets Jeremy Paxman, that’s what our gaff is like. No . . . I was just wondering how a normal household worked. I don’t think I’ve ever had one, or at least I sort of assumed I did, but now . . .’
She sighed, thinking about Conrad’s scorched eye-brows, of the pile of cinders that was once the tree house and his precious brushes, and how Jasper had been discovered, after the fire was out and they all trailed back up the garden in the cool night air, floating in the pool with his eyes closed and quietly singing REM’s ‘Nightswimming’ to himself.
‘He does that,’ Lizzie had explained. ‘He sometimes prefers to avoid reality.’
‘Reality?’ Cass and Pandora had said at the same time, going into immediate hysterical laughter. Whatever other effect Conrad’s peculiarities were having, at least they seemed to be bringing the two of them closer together. They were right, too. ‘Reality’ was a long way from how things were in the house.
How restful, Sara thought, some of normality must be. Had she ever had it? Much as she loved not being that corporate cog, married to another of the same, couldn’t an ordinary regular life add up to deep, unchallenging peace? Or were other people’s husbands all as weird and nutty as her own behind the closed doors? Or was she the wayward one? Why, while she was sitting opposite Stuart as she so often did on Wednesday lunchtimes, was she suddenly thinking, oh wouldn’t it be good to be here with Ben? She looked at Stuart’s grimy fingers wrapped plumply round a pint of bitter and tried to picture Ben’s clean, tanned hand instead. Ridiculous, she thought; she was behaving like a daydreaming teenager. She hadn’t been like this since pre-Conrad – and she’d been little more than a teenager then. Grown-ups don’t do this.
‘ Normal,’ Stuart chuckled. ‘After the bit in the marriage service where you’ve said “I do”, I really don’t think there’s any such thing.’
He couldn’t have known . . . could he? That she hadn’t taken her car to work? Ben was in a cute black convertible Audi, waiting outside the college for Sara when she finished work that afternoon. The Audi’s roof was down, he had aviator sunglasses on and music blasting. Nice car, she thought, walking right past it, not recognizing him, simply mildly annoyed at the volume of sound coming from the vehicle. REM’s ‘Imitation Of Life’, which she loved, was blasting out. A casual radio hearing of the song gave her instant elation, but she would have had better manners than to inflict it on the population around her.
‘Hey, Sara!’ She turned round and there was Ben, opening the door, climbing out. He took off his sunglasses and smiled at her. ‘Would you like
a lift home? I was . . . er . . . passing.’ He looked slightly embarrassed, as if he didn’t quite expect her to believe him. And she didn’t, really. Why would he be ‘passing’ a place that was way off the town centre, in a cul-de-sac? Adrenalin was spiking her bloodstream and she had a wild moment of wanting to leap into the car and be driven for the rest of the day to as far as they could get. Scotland would be good; anywhere that took her a long, long way from the ever crazier Conrad to somewhere that promised peace and just one night of responsibility-free . . . what? Passion? That holy-grail zip-less fuck that Marie had so joyfully discovered? Possibly. The realization that she no longer counted this right out of the reckoning shocked her. How short a time ago was it that this would never, not once, have crossed her mind?
‘Thanks, Ben – I’d love a lift.’ He opened the passenger door for her and she climbed in, feeling like someone from a 1950s film. All she needed was a cream silk head-scarf and Sophia Loren’s big dark glasses. Conrad had had a few convertible cars over the years, but somehow this kind of quasi-romantic image hadn’t ever figured.
‘Did you guess I’d left the car at home, or were you waiting for just any random woman to come out of the building looking like she could use a ride home?’
‘No – I was just in the town and thought, hey I’ll see, on the off chance, if you’re here. I left my phone at home so couldn’t call you but I assumed it was every Wednesday afternoon you worked, so not such a bad guess. Now . . .’ Ben started the engine, headed down the college driveway, then turned to her and smiled, looking dangerously mischievous. ‘Where shall we go for some secret fun?’
‘Secret fun? What sort of secret fun?’ This felt as if he’d been too close to reading her flighty mind.
‘Fun fun! Skiving-what-we’re-supposed-to-be-doing kind of fun!’ She could see he was laughing at her, having caught her out assuming he meant sex.
‘Oh that kind of fun!’ she said, thinking for a moment, then deciding quickly. ‘OK, I know where we can go . . . turn left! I love this, that feeling that nobody knows where I am, or who I’m with.’
‘That’s highly dangerous,’ Ben said. ‘Suppose I’m that strange man your mother warned you never to talk to? Anything could happen.’
‘Yes, but I’m not some silly teenager!’ she argued. ‘Though actually, a silly teenager is exactly what I feel like if I’m honest.’
‘And that makes you happy?’
‘I don’t know about happy. Happy’s a big word, a long-term word.’ She didn’t want to think beyond the moment. ‘But this is brilliant! If you only knew how good it is not to be going straight home right now . . .’
And that would be OK, she thought, swiftly counting through the people in her house. Cassie’s lecture had been cancelled, so she was home with Charlie. Jasper and Pandora were grown up enough to keep themselves occupied and Conrad . . . well, Conrad was watching the racing on TV, something he’d never bothered with before but which had had him scanning the list of runners for Newmarket that morning with an alarming look of expensive new enthusiasm. If he got through the afternoon without losing thousands, she’d consider it as good as a winning streak.
Sara leaned back on the cream leather headrest, feeling the wind whooshing her hair round her face. She closed her eyes and the music came back on again, the same REM song as before, close to the end now. It had been an REM song Jasper had been singing to himself in the pool the night before, as they’d put out the fire and taken a mightily deflated Conrad back to the house. He had looked defeated but defiant, as if there was some essential something they had all failed to understand.
She’d offered him tea and said he should go to bed, sleep off his strange mood, but he’d told her she was a fussing witch, insisted on brandy and sat outside with the bottle, smoking many cigarettes and complaining he was still cold and it was all their fault. Some kind of mad stubbornness wouldn’t let him simply come back into the house and he’d slid into bed hours later, freezing, falling into a dead sleep instantly and breathing smoky boozy fumes at her. Jasper and the girls had gone down to the studio. Cass had told Sara that morning that no one had mentioned Conrad, but they had simply watched comfort television and avoided conversation completely.
‘OK, over here, on the left. Wherever you can find somewhere to park,’ Sara said, pointing to the common.
‘Ah – now this looks like real fun!’ Ben said, as he turned off the main road and saw the fairground laid out ahead of them. ‘I haven’t been to a fair for years, not since . . .’
‘Since?’ she prompted. ‘Since your children were small?’
‘Yes – something like that. Actually I can’t really remember. I suppose we must have been to a few at some stage, but when they’re little you spend all your time trying to keep them from racing into the path of the Waltzer or getting lost in the crowd, or sick from candyfloss. And then when they’re big enough to enjoy it properly . . .’ He shrugged.
‘Yes, I know. They’d rather be with anyone but a parent and you either get them sliding out of sight with their mates or sulking and refusing to go on any rides, even though you know they’re desperate to!’
Ben backed the car into what seemed an impossibly small space between a motorbike and a Mini, pressed a button and the roof started to come up. Sitting there beside him as it whirred into place, Sara was conscious that the space had become a very intimate one. She would almost have preferred to stay there for hours, just sharing this capsule with him, talking. But then Ben switched off the music (Queen now, the poignant ‘Lily Of The Valley’). Once the car doors were open and the spring air flowed in, the intimacy dissolved and together they walked up the road towards the fairground.
‘It’s only just opened, by the look of it,’ Sara said as they approached. ‘Looks like we’re almost the first in.’
‘Good. Then we won’t have to queue for the big wheel and I can get the pick of the prizes when I shoot all the ducks down.’
‘Are we still allowed to use guns?’ she asked. ‘I’m surprised. I’d have thought Health and Safety would have a ball with this lot. I know you can’t win fish any more.’
Ben laughed. ‘Yeah, but ours always died in about a day. Didn’t yours? I thought they were pretty poor value, as a prize.’
‘We had one that went on for six years. He ended up about a foot long and very fat. There was something unnerving about the way he looked at you, and he’d gone all silver instead of gold by the time he died. Like someone whose hair is very suddenly going white.’ She shivered. ‘I really didn’t trust that fish. He had . . . powers!’
‘Oh God, I’m out with a loon!’ Ben backed away, laughing at her. ‘There must be a word for it, this irrational fear of goldfish. Some variation on piscophobia, do you
think? Orpiscophobia?’
Sara punched him gently. ‘Not all goldfish! Just that one. We buried him very deep when he went, I can tell you. Oh look – dodgems! Come on!’
Ben was a formidable dodgem opponent. He and Sara were the only customers, so a couple of the fairground boys joined them to make it a good battle and he outmanoeuvred them easily, determined to scare the life out of Sara. Just as she was bracing herself for each almighty smash as he raced towards her, he’d swerve at the last second, maybe only nudging her car gently, confusing her.
Eventually, exhausted and all laughed out, they wandered across to the rifle-shooting.
‘Now,’ he said. ‘Do I come over all macho and try to win you the big stuffed tiger? Or is this where you push me aside and prove that you’re the Annie Oakley of Richmond?’
‘Never held a gun in my life, honest!’ she told him. ‘Charlie might like that tiger,’ she said, pointing to the array of stuffed-toy prizes, ‘though possibly a smaller version would be less terrifying for him. It’s about ten times his size!’
‘The smaller one it is then.’ Ben handed over the cash to a massively overweight blonde bulging out of a purple satin micro-skirt, and picked up the rifle, peering down the
sight line. Men always do this, she thought, always try to look as if a gun is something they’re really familiar with, because that’s the blokey way to be. How often would a freelance feature-writer have handled a gun? All the same, every one of Ben’s shots hit the target.
‘Hey, brilliant!’ Sara hugged him, out of spontaneous delight. His arms were round her, his mouth brushed lightly against hers. She moved away, the moment passing, but she knew she’d think of it later when she was on her own.
‘Just call me Bill Cody. Which prize for you, my lady?’ he asked her. ‘Big tiger? Medium? Or can I interest you in the leopard?’
‘Medium tiger, please.’ She pointed to one that seemed to have a knowing smirk. The purple-clad giantess handed it to Ben with no suggestion of a smile. He gave the tiger to Sara and she cuddled it against her.
‘What will you call him?’ Ben asked as they strolled towards the candyfloss van. The fairground was filling up now; families were out, schoolkids were roaming in giggly groups and there were shrieks from the rides.
‘Putney,’ she said. ‘The fish was called Abingdon after the fair where we won him, so it seems right, somehow.’
‘Every chance this one won’t triple in size, too.’
It was well into the rush hour as Ben drove them home. Confidently, he whizzed through various back roads so they didn’t have to sit in stationary traffic. Sara was glad – she wanted to get back now. While she had been pressed by G force against Ben on the Waltzer and his arm was round her, she’d thought of Conrad and what he might be doing at home while she was out having teenage-type shrieky fun, clutching the big cheap toy and feeling sticky with candyfloss. Suppose he had another go at burning something? The entire house? Himself ? She imagined the girls distraught, saying, ‘But where were you?’ Would it come to this, that she’d be afraid to leave Conrad unsupervised, or was it just that she felt guilty being with someone else, tempting fate, perhaps?
‘OK, would you like me to drop you?’ Ben asked as they approached the riverside. Of course, he didn’t yet know where she lived. She still slightly wanted to keep it that way, still be Sara McKinley for a free-spirited while, put off the moment when he said, as he surely would, ‘Ah! So your husband is Conrad Blythe-Hamilton!’
