This? I hardly knew where to start. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
Her smile was hard to read, combining excitement and apology and another emotion oddly like guile. ‘I was going to when we met on Wednesday, but . . .’
‘But it didn’t make the news headlines?’ It had all happened so quickly I wasn’t certain if my agony was caused by her decision to marry Kit, an unsuitable husband by anyone’s standards, or her decision to marry at all. I was sick both with envy of him and self-loathing for the way I’d betrayed him – and Clare.
She stepped closer, cupped my elbow. Her touch was tender, full of commiseration. ‘Look, there’s not time now, but I’ll explain everything next time we meet.’
‘You don’t need to explain, darling.’ I pulled myself together, tried to look pleased for her.
‘Don’t I?’ She was suddenly full of sorrow. ‘Are you saying you don’t want me to?’
‘I’m saying I don’t expect you to. If this is what you want, then—’
‘Next week,’ she interrupted, taking the risk of placing a finger on my lips.
Next week? She couldn’t mean . . . I knew her well enough to know she was unusually willing – some might say entitled – to have her cake and eat it, but surely that didn’t include wedding cake? Gently, I brushed her finger away. ‘I’m going on holiday next week, Melia. I told you. We leave on Wednesday. I’ll be away for two weeks.’
‘Oh yes. As soon as you get back then. I haven’t got my schedule yet for that week, so I don’t know which day is good. Wednesday or Thursday, though, same as usual.’
‘Same as usual?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes gripped mine with an almost fanatical desire to persuade. ‘Trust me, Jamie. I need you. I really— Oh, Clare, they’re so pretty!’
Clare had returned with a sweet bunch of wildflowers, which Melia clutched demurely over her abdomen while Clare took photos on her phone. She had taken on a semi-officiating role, it seemed. ‘Are you planning a honeymoon, Me? I hate to be the bad guy, but you haven’t booked any leave, have you? The holiday roster was worked out ages ago. Should I talk to Richard for you?’
Melia’s smiled as if sharing a joke. ‘Oh, we’re not having a honeymoon. We can’t afford that.’
Kit, who’d spent so long in the loo I could only guess what he’d been doing there, reappeared by her side. ‘We can’t afford anything,’ he agreed, cheerfully. ‘We begin our married life as beggars.’
And then the beggars’ names were called and it was happening. The official was full of genuine good cheer, even if it was a comically short service in an empty room, there being no readings or additional vows and no other guests besides Clare and me.
Afterwards, like a star and his hippie child bride, the newlyweds fled the opulent interior for the stone steps outside, feet kicking confetti from the unions that preceded their own. They were holding hands, giggling together. You’d never guess one of them had promised to continue her adultery with a third party just moments before taking her vows and the other had inhaled illegal drugs he couldn’t afford. Then they got on their phones and invited people, seemingly at random, to join them for drinks at the Stag, a big pub on the river at Greenwich.
We shared a taxi there, Melia sandwiched between Kit and Clare in the back. I could smell the jasmine of her scent and wondered, with sudden fright, if Clare had ever smelled it on me. No, she couldn’t have or we wouldn’t all be here together today.
God forbid it rain on their special day: a thin sun was rising, warming our skin and shooting light at us from the water as we walked in a line like some dysfunctional Fab Four (or perhaps The Usual Suspects). As we approached the doors of the pub, Clare said to Melia, ‘Will you let us buy the champagne as a wedding present?’
I couldn’t bear to look at Melia’s traitorous face as she accepted, so kept my eyes on Clare’s. She was beaming, wholehearted in her goodwill, and I saw that it was not so much the act of marriage itself that had stirred her as the rock ’n’ roll spontaneity of the occasion. I also saw the emotion that would succeed it, if not later today then soon: disappointment in herself for having eschewed tradition when she could simply have subverted it like Melia had.
‘Nice of you to pick up the bill for the champagne,’ I said, when we were on our own.
‘I just thought, you know, we need to remember how lucky we are,’ she said, which I knew from previous declarations was code for, We need to remember how talented and hardworking we are – because people who’ve been helped never accept that their success is a simple consequence of that. They think they’d have been just as successful without it.
Also, since I was being pedantic, she meant I, not we. She hadn’t consulted me about the champagne because she had no need to. Conversely, I couldn’t have made the gesture without consulting her. The truth was that by leaving my white-collar career I’d rendered myself as economically helpless as the Ropers themselves, and in the year since, I’d failed to take advantage of careers counselling and turned down a direct leg-up from Richard. Instead, I’d focused my energies on a secret extra-curricular opportunity that was about to be withdrawn, regardless of what Melia had appeared to claim at the register office.
Same as usual . . .
Not possible, my love, not possible.
I tipped my glass to my lips and swallowed Clare’s champagne in one.
*
Over the course of the next couple of hours, as the temperature rose and the rain held off, the Ropers’ friends arrived at the river. Clare met Steve and Gretchen and I met various colleagues from Melia’s division at Hayter Armstrong. Her director and Clare’s business partner, Richard, was away on holiday in his cottage in Brittany, the very one Clare and I would be occupying the following week. How did he feel about Melia, I wondered? Was he as charmed as everyone else, as compelled to possess that slippery beauty as I was? Had she considered him for her affair? (I need a man without all this debt!) Or did his three kids present an obstruction that was helpfully missing in my case?
But this was bitterness talking. Anguish. Melia had not cynically chosen me any more than I had her. We liked each other – loved, if only briefly. And Richard, had he been here, would probably simply have offered the cash-strapped couple his holiday home for a few days’ honeymoon, thrown in flights as a wedding present.
‘Well, this is completely nuts,’ Gretchen said to me, not exactly through gritted teeth, but with an edge to her enthusiasm. In this realm of actors and deceivers, she was real. It was clear she’d mobilized quickly for the event, her hair flat and in need of a wash, lacy dress a little crumpled, toenail polish chipped. I remembered Melia’s accusations that she and Kit were involved and I had the sudden thought that this was both humanity’s curse and saving grace: our biological need to know who liked who. To keep the whole thing going, generation after generation. The same negotiations, the same vows, the same ratio of winners to losers. A zero-sum game.
‘What’s nuts?’ I said. I was grateful for the brightening sky; with sunglasses on, I was less fearful of exposing emotions inappropriate for the occasion. ‘You mean Kit getting married so suddenly?’
‘I mean at all. I would have thought he was the last person to spend money on something like this and, to be honest, the only time I ever hear him talk about her he’s complaining.’
‘And vice versa,’ I admitted.
‘Well, you would know, Jamie.’
‘How do you mean?’
There was a long moment. Did Gretchen know? If she did, how? The only possible means was Kit himself. I remembered my first thought when I’d heard the news of the wedding was he wanted to formalize his claim to Melia, to warn me off. But instinct told me that Clare was right: Melia had driven this. Had she found out about his infidelity and this was the result?
Trust me, Jamie. I need you.
The thought made me shiver.
Finally, Gretchen answered. ‘I just meant you’re the only one of us who knows them both. Steve a
nd I have never met her before. Or Clare.’
‘Right.’ I felt a sudden lurch of disorientation. A year ago, I didn’t know a single one of these people. Even the Hayter Armstrong employees present were from the lettings arm and therefore under my radar. The only constant was Clare and I was aware that I was avoiding her as discreetly as I could, terrified my mood would give me away.
I excused myself to use the loo. Returning, I could hear Kit and Steve talking at the bar, indiscreet enough to be discussing the very question on their guests’ lips.
Steve’s normally indistinct voice was helpfully amplified by drink. ‘So whose idea was this, mate?’
‘Melia’s, of course.’
My scalp prickled.
‘It was either this or split up,’ Kit added.
‘Seriously. Wow.’ Steve whistled. ‘Classic ultimatum. You’d think after Me Too and all that, women wouldn’t want to get married, but they do, don’t they? There’s hope for me yet. Speaking of which, I like the look of—’ He broke off, his tone altering to one of amusement: ‘What’re you doing loitering there, Jamie? Earwigging on us, were you?’
‘I was.’ I stepped forward to join them. ‘If you want my two cents, fear of turning thirty can be a powerful motivator. My colleague Regan thinks she’s ancient at twenty-four.’
‘Yeah? Or maybe Me wants kids?’ Steve suggested, with the disgusted resignation of someone discovering he’d got a parking ticket.
Kit, however, looked genuinely shocked. Shocked at the thought of having a child or shocked that Steve had guessed the truth, I wondered? I had an image then, of Melia being pregnant, of the baby possibly being mine but the paternity never challenged. My mind burned through the catastrophized consequences: an email from a teenager who’d been alerted to a DNA match; Clare urging me to investigate, to welcome the youngster into our lives.
A few minutes later, back outdoors, when Melia and I were next alone and out of earshot of the others, I asked her. ‘You’re not pregnant, are you? Is that why you’ve done this?’
‘Uh, this is 2019, Jamie, not 1950.’ She laughed, raising her glass to my face. ‘And I’d hardly be drinking like this, would I?’
On cue, Kit came tripping over with a champagne bottle to top us up. Over his shoulder, I saw Clare and Steve standing together, her head tipped to listen, smile broad. The weather had turned quite beautiful by then; just two or three careless blotches of cloud remained, as if sponged onto the blue by infants. Our group had colonized a stretch of river path and someone played music on their phone, tinny as a music box. Melia began dancing with a friend, a girl with a solemn, angular face and tanned lean legs. The song was Lana Del Rey’s version of ‘Doin’ Time’ and the women moved as if unaware of anyone but each other. Tourists, identifying the centre of the afternoon’s energy, formed a loose ring around the party, taking pictures, watching the girls dance. I’d like to hold her . . . I mouthed, trying to remember the lyrics from listening to the original track years ago, when I’d been young myself.
I became aware of Kit looking at me and let the song drift from my attention. ‘Congratulations, mate,’ I said, with a decent impression of cheer. ‘You’re a lucky man.’
‘Yeah, thanks, Jamie.’ He turned his face to the water as if overcome by the force of my goodwill; as if I had made all of this happen. The river, for once, looked almost wholesome, a body of fresh water, its temperature agreeable and currents benign.
But, you only had to take a few steps forward and the way the sun flashed off the vertical silver surfaces of Canary Wharf could blind a man. Knock him right off his feet.
19
September 2019
The routine of our annual late-summer holiday with my father was well worn. We always collected him from his place near Winchester and took the express ferry from Portsmouth to Cherbourg, then on to somewhere in Normandy or Brittany. We always agreed how fantastic it was to be childfree and able to travel in term time to beautiful places rendered insufferable in August in the presence of screaming kids (we always agreed this before we picked up Dad, who we knew privately regarded our not having children as a tragedy).
‘Imagine the traffic in school holidays!’ Clare said, word perfect, as the A3 slid by without a single snarl-up.
‘I know. Horrific.’
‘I much prefer September weather, anyway.’
‘Best of both worlds,’ I agreed.
So far, so familiar, but she surprised me then by straying from the next part of the script – the financial savings to be made by avoiding August – and plunging into heavy silence. My eyes were on the road, on the incessant lane-changing of a van just ahead, but after a while I glanced across and saw she was glaring at the dashboard. ‘What’s up? You look annoyed.’
‘I was just thinking about Melia and Kit. The wedding.’ Ah. As I mentioned, following occasions of high excitement, Clare was more prone than most to the forces of anti-climax and so I’d been expecting this downturn in mood. For my own part, in order to conduct myself on the holiday with appropriate cheer – in order to save my sanity, frankly – I’d chosen to regard the Ropers’ nuptials as a hallucination.
‘I mean, they’re the ones always arguing,’ Clare said. ‘We thought they were close to splitting up, didn’t we?’
They’re the ones: she meant in comparison with us.
‘Maybe all that volatility is just passion,’ she added, glumly. ‘I thought millennials didn’t have sex. That’s what I read in the Telegraph.’
I laughed.
‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because what you just said was funny! Why should you care about it, anyway? It was their decision to get married.’
She turned defensive. ‘It’s tradition after a wedding, isn’t it, to question your situation? Your choices.’
I indicated to exit the A3, inhaling for exactly the length of time my foot eased the brake. I knew I had no chance of closing the lid on this, the criticism of me about to spill out. I couldn’t regard my relationship with Clare as a hallucination, too.
‘It’s been rough for me, you know, Jamie,’ she said, all fired up.
‘What has?’
‘Supporting you.’
‘Supporting me? I don’t see why it should be rough on you.’ On the roundabout, some twat tried to undertake and my mood turned incautious. ‘You don’t need my salary, you could live exactly as you are without any contribution from me. It’s me who’s taken the risk and downgraded myself.’
I shut up, at risk of protesting too much. She was quite right to doubt us, she just didn’t yet know why. I saw suddenly that the number plate on the car in front had the same first three letters as ours. What were the odds?
‘I wasn’t talking about financial support,’ Clare said, coolly. ‘The wedding made me take stock, that’s all.’
I experienced a rush of fear. ‘You don’t mean you want to get married?’ My confidence wavered. ‘You want to split up?’ For a moment, I wondered if we’d reach France. I had a sudden urge to follow our matching number plate wherever it took us.
‘Neither of those,’ Clare said. ‘I just think something needs to change.’
Well, it was too late for children, our biological own at least. I prayed she wasn’t going to suggest adoption or surrogacy or something that involved official examination of my habits.
‘I’d like a bit more honesty,’ she said. ‘I can’t plan otherwise.’
I noted the singular. Was she subconsciously framing her future in terms of independence or was guilt making me oversensitive? She’d literally just denied wanting to separate. I glanced at the satnav’s predicted time of arrival. We were six minutes from my father’s house.
‘Honesty is good,’ I said, with as much commitment as I could bring to such humbug. ‘But maybe we need to park this for now and concentrate on the trip.’
She nodded. ‘You’re right. Let’s get the holiday out of the way and then see where we are.’
As she reset her m
ood, I felt the imminent clutch of a gloom of my own. I hadn’t liked that exchange one bit. What was she withholding? A secret affair of her own? (No partner could have been less mistrustful than me.) It struck me that I was totally at her mercy – hers and Melia’s – robbed of my autonomy by these two women.
Wouldn’t that be the definition of irony? To be ditched by both of them.
Irony or just deserts, one of the two.
*
The Channel crossing was smooth, the onward journey by car soothingly familiar. The blue autoroute signs, the scalding coffee from petrol station vending machines, the big-sky promise of breathing space, of emptiness.
I was pleased we were basing ourselves in Brittany this time and not Normandy. The Normandy beaches are vast and beautiful, but to step onto them is to pass through the ghosts of war. I didn’t want to think of stolen lives that holiday; I didn’t want to reflect on my own rank ignobility.
We’d stayed a few times in Richard’s ‘cottage’, a blue-shuttered farmhouse surrounded by wildflower meadows and pine woods, meticulously renovated and decorated by his wife, Agnès. We were instantly at home there, our groove easily got back. One thing I would say about Clare and me: we wanted the same thing out of our holidays, the same thing every day: sleep, walk, swim, cook, eat, drink. My father was no trouble; he partook of all of the above with the exception of the walk, and he’d always loved Clare. All things considered, we were happy holiday makers – at least, at first.
‘This is so inspiring. I think gardening will be my new thing,’ Clare said, over lunch on the fourth or fifth day. All meals were taken on the canopied stone terrace, surrounded by a botanical garden’s worth of hydrangeas, whose blues perfectly complemented the hue of the local rosé and made me remember the colours Kit and Melia had worn the first time I met them.
‘Who’s looking after that big house of yours?’ Dad asked.
‘A lovely local girl called Delilah,’ Clare said. ‘She’s just left university and she’s working on a screenplay, so it will be somewhere quiet for her to write for a couple of weeks. It was Jamie’s idea.’
The Other Passenger Page 12
