Julia Gets a Life

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  And Nigel, I decided, was probably right. Who would be arsed? No-one.

  Wrong again, J.

  Chapter 24

  Seaside

  Sun

  Sea

  Sand

  Sandcastles

  Surf

  Seashells

  Starfish

  Spray

  Salt

  Styrofoam Cups

  Seagulls

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘No, no, NO! You can’t say the S word!’

  ‘All right. Um…...Swordfish.’

  ‘No. Can’t have it. You can’t see any.’

  ‘I can.’

  ‘No, you can’t.’

  ‘Yes I can. In the Sealife Centre. So there.’

  ‘No you can’t. You can’t actually see them. The rule is….’

  ‘Okay, okay. Um….......um…........hell, sex.’

  The things you do.

  Kite were supposed to be doing a live radio interview and phone in for Surf FM early Saturday evening, but Nigel cancelled it because of the drug raid story. Which suited everyone fine.

  ‘Didn’t want to talk to some Dickhead DJ with a playlist he got out of his own backside anyway,’ Davey announced, with rare animation. And was speaking for the rest of the band also, it seemed. So there was half of Saturday night to kill.

  When Nigel left, Craig showered and shaved (with my pink razor) then padded off to his own room in my high density towelling.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be nice,’ I’d remarked, putting on mascara while he shampooed his hair, ‘if we could go out for a walk on the beach, or something. You must really miss being able to do things like that.’

  ‘Not often. I’m a bit of a lazy bugger. (Patently untrue. He was fit and energetic and driven.) I quite like being chauffeured everywhere and brought take-aways.’

  ‘Who wouldn’t? But surely you’ll tire of it eventually.’

  ‘I can’t imagine it now. But I suppose after Kite my face won’t be slapped all over the place the way it is now, so it won’t be a problem any more.’

  ‘I wouldn’t bank on it. Look at people like Sting, or Phil Collins…’

  ‘I’d rather not, thanks.’

  ‘But you might end up like that, might you not?’

  ‘Not. For definite. Once we’ve done all we can with Kite I’m going to open a little specialist music shop off Shaftsbury Avenue and spend my days selling Fenders and Gibsons and jamming with elderly session musicians.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Of course I’m fucking not! I’ll be living it up! I’ll have fucking millions! And perhaps I’ll buy Wales, so I can have you as my own private serf…Hah! What do you think, Mrs Sexygorgeous Potter?’

  When he came back, even I didn’t recognise him.

  ‘Baggy clothes, sunglasses, hat. The job’s done. Where are we walking?’

  So we’re down at the quiet end of the beach and though I have seen several teenagers staring and obviously wondering, not one has been sufficiently bold to confront him. Which is lovely. I have him all to myself.

  ‘Sunhat! There!’

  ‘Does it say Kiss Me Quick?’

  ‘No….Reebok, it looks like. But there’s another one.’

  ‘And what does that say?’

  ‘It says CJ 4 JP’

  ‘Oh, come on…’

  ‘Come on what? I’d make a very good magistrate. Have the likes of you fucking dope-head Depth photographers banged up, that’s for sure.’

  ‘Har, har. Very funny. Sandwiches.’

  ‘Sex.’

  ‘Not allowed….’

  ‘Sex. Really. Over there. You see that boat?’

  ‘What boat?’

  ‘Over there. Way up the beach. Past the windsurfer. Orange sail. Yes?’

  ‘Well look a little past that. There’s some sort of hut. You see? Where some old geezer probably keeps his maggots and so on..’

  ‘Yuck. Yes…’

  ‘Well just beyond that, a little further down the shingle, is an old boat. Upside down. And propped up at one end by an oilcan. Being painted, I suppose. Or pitched, perhaps.’

  ‘Yes….’

  ‘Well that’s it.’

  ‘But it’s deserted over there. I can’t see anyone at all, let alone two people having sex…’

  ‘Well of course you can’t…’

  ‘But you said…’

  ‘What I said was Sex. Really. Over there.’

  ‘But there isn’t…’

  ‘But there will be. Just as soon as we’re under it.’

  I said you’re joking, and but we can’t and even but what if somebody sees us? To which Craig quite reasonably replied I’m not, and we can, and they won’t. All of which was true. Like any other oily, boaty, ropey out of the way bit of beach on a sultry summer Saturday evening, it had been passed over in favour of clean bits with deckchairs and proximity to tea stands and kiosks and toilets. And if some crusty old sea dog should happen along here, he’d probably, Craig reasoned, consider it a bonus.

  And my body was clearly in agreement. The gentle heat that had been quietly simmering in my lower torso all afternoon was fired up, whoosh!, like a boiler, before the words ‘under it’ were out of his mouth.

  We jogged the few yards past the windsurfer (surfer abandoned? Drowned?) and on to an area of knobbly, oil darkened shingle, that was littered with old bits of rope and driftwood.

  ‘We can’t do it on this,’ I said, privately expecting we’d manage.

  ‘No probs,’ he replied, veering off across the stones. ‘We’ll use this!’ It was a large slice of ancient tyre tread, culled, no doubt from a junk yard, and to be used, I supposed, as a buffer for the front of a boat.

  That it would provide instead buffering for my backside touched me as too ridiculous for words and I laughed.

  Craig tutted and pulled me by the hand.

  ‘Under that boat, Mrs Potter, and look lively about it, or I’ll have you on fatigues for the rest of the voyage.’

  Obediently, I crawled on in. It was a big, deep boat, and would seat six or so, comfortably. The seats themselves, three wide and greying wooden planks, formed the cross beams of our roof. With the prow propped, and facing seawards, our domed hidey hole put me instantly in mind of a mini Sydney Opera House, thrusting out towards a shimmering blue seascape. Craig, though, had more prosaic matters on his mind.

  ‘You realise that if the Man from Atlantis emerges from the waves here, he’s going to get a cracking view of your arse.’

  ‘And yours.’

  ‘I shall have to keep my shorts on. Can’t afford to be recognised, remember? there’s fuck all space for an autograph session in here.’

  I pulled him towards me. ‘Come on, be serious. Now you’ve got me here I expect to be ravished. Indeed I demand to be ravished…’

  ‘So stop talking and let me get on with it.’

  He hooked his thumbs under the hem of my T-Shirt, and slid it up over my head. Cool air brushed my nipples and I thought I might implode.

  ‘Then get on with it!’

  He covered one with his lips.

  ‘Thwex,’ he said.

  ‘Ahhh….....What? I’m sorry?’

  His head lifted.

  ‘I said sex.’

  It moved over. Reconnected.

  ‘Okay…...oh, my God…...oh, yes!...Okay, one point!’

  When we got back to the hotel, the gaggle of girls had become more of a flock, so we fiddled our way round the dustbins and beercrates and entered via the fire exit just off the kitchens.

  ‘Packing up, I guess,’ Craig remarked. ‘Wagons at dawn.’

  Thoughts of tomorrow began to nibble at my consciousness. Tomorrow, the next day, the day after that. How many years had I been here already? It felt like forever.

  ‘When do you actually leave?’

  ‘Not sure, exactly. I have a date in Streatham at one o’c
lock sharp.’

  ‘Date?’

  ‘With my Mum, and roast lamb and mint sauce. Wanna come?’

  God, yes.

  ‘I can’t. I have to get back. Quite apart from anything else I have a deadline to meet. I have to get all my pictures uploaded and sorted. The printers will need them – the book’s due out in December…. and I have to meet with Colin to discuss the pictures and, oh…...’

  ‘And then?’

  We had reached his room. He slid his keycard across the lock and turned the handle. The other hand, warm and strong, still held mine.

  ‘And then…and then, who knows? I have a day job. I suppose I’ll get on and do it. Click, click, smile, please. Like you do. Unless Colin comes up with any exciting new commissions….’

  ‘And your husband? Your marriage?’

  He let go of my hand and strode across the room. ‘Coke, wine, beer, something?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Ugh! I don’t want to talk about that. Don’t want to even think about that. That’s someone else altogether. I’m a rock-chick-groupie-babe-good time girl. Now gimme a beer.’

  He flipped off the top and passed it to me. Like the blanket of dusk that was darkening the sky and the room, a terrible melancholy seemed to have settled on me.

  And no strings of coloured lightbulbs to cheer it.

  He kissed me and said,

  ‘No way. You’re not that.’

  Then he seemed to change gear, and picked his guitar up. He smiled.

  ‘Sit yourself down, Mrs Sexygorgeous Potter, and let me play you a bit of a tune.’

  Which is exactly what he did. He told me he’d been ‘fiddling around’ with it for a few weeks, and that he was really excited by it, and that he thought it had the makings of a really good single. And that he hadn’t run it by Jonathan yet, and that he was going to play it to his Mum tomorrow. And that his Mum (though not remotely musical) had a real ear for a tune and that when he was a teenager, and his mates were all out all the time on the pull, he’d spend hour upon hour in his bedroom, practising on his guitar and composing, and sometimes she’d put her head round the door and tell him, yes, or no, or to try changing a chord or two.

  And how much he wished he could persuade her to let him buy her a flat somewhere ‘a bit nicer’ than Streatham, and how he was looking forward to getting started on the new album. And how much he loved writing music (who wouldn’t?) and how much he loved touring and performing (a real day’s work), and how much he disliked all the promo work. And how, with the tour finished, and a single due out, it would be one long round now of interviews and photo shoots and TV and ‘crap generally’, and how he couldn’t wait to get on with the next tour, the next album. Some peace from the spotlight, some space in which to write.

  And as I watched his fingers move lovingly, fluidly, across his guitar, and his expression take on an intentness, a focus, that both took him away and yet brought him closer to me, I felt more privileged and special than I could ever recall feeling.

  When he finished playing he leaned over his guitar to kiss me again.

  Then smiled. ‘That’s yours now, okay?’

  And I didn’t know what was going to happen next in my life except that whatever it was it would not be able to compare with the exquisite beauty of this small taste of simple, perfect, uncluttered affection.

  I wanted to cry.

  *

  I left the hotel before he was up.

  Just beating the sun to its pink strip of horizon, I packed, checked out and was rattling along the breezy and deserted prom before six. The car felt cold and unfamiliar after its weekend underground, and I had to put the heater on to warm myself up.

  What now?

  I tried to focus on Max and Emma; to think sensible, meaningful, maternal thoughts. To think about buying new uniforms, Max starting High School, whether Emma was pining for Damon or not . Whether she’d sent him an illicit postcard, whether I (we) should let her continue to see him. About what sort of stand I (we) should take about sex. I thought about Lily, and the new life inside her, and whether she’d yet plucked up the courage to tell Malcolm. I thought about Time Of Your Life; that at this time tomorrow my alarm would go off, and I’d get up for work. And Howard. Would he and Nick keep things together? Was his Mum okay? How would he cope with her death?

  And each thought that I thought would be brushed to one side by the nagging and horrible consciousness that every single mile that I drove took me one mile further away from him.

  As I waited at the traffic lights at Preston I spotted a familiar face. My constable; he of the cones and diversion, now striding the mean streets of Brighton at dawn. He was with a partner, engrossed in intense conversation, and I doubt they even noticed my car. Forty eight hours and a lifetime had gone by. My VIP pass now said Access Real Life.

  Chapter 25

  We hadn’t made any plans.

  The last conversation we had (before the last – wonderful, poignant – sex we had) involved him asking if I was really sure I didn’t want to go to Streatham with him on my way home (Kite were dispersing for a few days to see ‘rellies etc.’), and me confirming again (agonisingly) that I had to get back and get organised and suchlike. I gave him my number; he gave me his; His mum’s, his own, his mobile, his fax line, his email address. And ditto with Nigel’s, all of which I duly deposited in my bag. We talked about when I might be next up in London, and whether we could meet up and do ‘something’ (huh?) then. We discussed the next month and Kite’s busy itinerary, and whether he could drive down to Cardiff (come on) to see me. In the end I agreed that we’d fix something up just as soon as we knew how our schedules panned out. He would call me, he said, tomorrow.

  But for what? To what end? What was going to be happening here? Would we meet up and make love on convenient tour dates? Would we send each other faxes? Exchange postcards? What?

  What nothing. It was hopeless. We were going nowhere. Whatever we said, however we felt, there was simply no future for us. End of story. By the time I pulled off the M4 I had a such a hard, hot ball of unhappiness inside me that I thought I might die from the pain.

  *

  So, thank heavens for mayhem.

  Sunday, late am. When I finally pull into our road, it is with the expectation of finding the house every bit as cold and empty as I am feeling. I am steeled for a whole day of Sunday-Evening-Work-Tomorrow melancholy. I am steeled, in fact, for a life of it. I am half writing a little speech in my head which begins ‘if only….’ (and ends, most probably, with a string of obscenities) when I turn into my drive and find that,

  outside, I have;

  A veldt

  A telephone directory and copy of the Yellow Pages

  A bouquet of flowers, propped on the doorstep

  An unfamiliar car, with a man in it

  As I have driven for three and a quarter hours without stopping for a wee, I digest the fact of these, but leave them all to their own devices and go on in. Whereupon I find that,

  inside, I have;

  A warm quiche

  A cold, message-less ansafone. (Why had I hoped?)

  And Lily. Who clatters down the stairs as soon as she hears me.

  ‘Thank God,’ she pants as I emerge from the cloakroom. ‘Perhaps now you can go out and talk sense into him.’

  Malcolm. I thought he looked strangely familiar.

  ‘What is he doing parked outside?’

  ‘He wants to talk to me.’

  ‘Obviously.’

  ‘But I don’t want to talk to him. Ach! You can’t imagine what it has been like…’

  Lily has a key, and has been watering my houseplants. She tells me she came here, to escape, a couple of days back, but that he soon tracked her down. He has, she says, been sitting outside for an hour.

  ‘So you told him, I take it?’

  ‘I had to. I am the size of a house and throwing up all the time. He confronted me
. He is silly, but not stupid.’

  ‘So how did he react?’

  ‘He wants to marry me. Oh, Julia, what am I going to do?’

  I go into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  ‘What do you want to do, Lily? Really?’

  She flops down on a chair and throws her hands into the air.

  ‘That’s just it! I can’t decide. One minute I think, how can I do this? How can I stay with this man that I don’t really love? And then I think, how can I not? He’s a good man. He is the father of this baby. He is pleased about this baby. What right do I have to be so selfish? And then I think….’

  But Lily clamps her mouth around her thought as the doorbell rings.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she cries. ‘Again!’

  Eventually, I persuade Lily to let Malcolm in, with his flowers and his apologies and his very patent distress. I finish making tea and then leave them to talk.

  Everything Lily says strikes a new chord in me. How can I this, how can I not that. I consider the dilemma she now finds herself in. Such a difficult choice, at such a young age. At that time of my life it was all so simple. I was happily married, I wanted my babies. There was no choice to make, other than to cut back, miss a holiday, stop work for a while.

  I try to imagine how it must feel to compromise on your heart so early on in your life. I think about Rani, and how she’s told me, in an unguarded moment, that she knows that eventually she’ll accept her parents wishes. Just accept them. And get on with it, whether she loves the man or not. No wonder she is so desperate to feel passion now. As if she needs to stoke up for a less heady future. Lily, I realise, doesn’t even have that.

  But it’s all academic. She and Malcolm could be as deeply in love as it is possible to be and their future would be no more certain. There are no easy choices where children are involved. Just sacrifices, one way and another. There is a price to be paid for the joy they bring.

  *

  ‘But I don’t see your problem. Why can’t you carry on seeing him?’

  We are sitting in Howard’s flat, at either end of the sofa. There is something tinkly and soothing playing on the stereo and we’ve just finished sharing a (sex free) kebab. Lily and Malcolm are long gone, in his car. Détente, for the moment at least.

  I sip at my wine and shake my head.