Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

  There was Chrissie laughing in the sea, Chrissie laughing with John, John laughing with Freddie, Freddie, toothless and naked in his nappy, laughing alone, Chrissie laughing AT John...now that was slightly safer ground, Chrissie laughing at John. She had seen that one before. Or had that been real life?

  Whatever, there were now definitely more pictures of the laughing Chrissie on display, many more than there had been, she was willing to swear to that.

  Lisa lifted her shoulder-length dark hair up in her arms and over the top of her head and raised her head up, sensuously. Then she let her hair fall for the just-been-to-bed look.

  She picked up a photograph of the laughing John and stared at the broken tooth his wife disliked so much. She imagined his dental notes. King: John. Fitting for crown.

  She wiped the glass and was gratified to see a pale grey layer of dust stick to her finger. She bent down and wiped it off on the Chinese rug on which she’d lain many a lazy evening, making love while the room darkened to inky blue and the trees outside turned black.

  At first she’d been resentful at it having to be the rug, but marrieds were superstitious about doing it in the double bed and the ornate iron day bed by the window was too small for two. Anyway, John had bought the rug. Had Chrissie bought the bed? she wondered. She would have to find out.

  She sat forward with her elbows on her knees and studied the laughing photographs again.

  She realised that she was meant to.

  What the photographs were saying was: look at us, we’re a happy family, we have fun together, this marriage works! Whereas before, there had been pictures of Chrissie looking moody, and of John squinting at the camera in a Die Hard pose.

  Lisa shivered and stood up, rubbing her arms through the silk of her skirt. What the pictures were also saying was, this is goodbye. I have chosen my colours and they’re not yours, Lisa. I am staying where I feel safe, where I belong, where I am happy. (See — on the mantelpiece — there’s the evidence!)

  ‘Oh,’ a voice from behind her, ‘I’m sorry to have kept you waiting.’

  Lisa got up, turned, smiled, shrugged good-naturedly whilst also staying cool. ‘I’ve been looking at your photographs,’ she said. As good an opening line as any.

  Silence. Chrissie stood a short distance away from her as if one of them had something contagious. She was looking serious but not sorry, fiddling with an earring. The silence stretched, the photographs were unexcused. No, ‘Oh, I’ve been sorting through the albums, fancied a bit of a change.’ No, ‘The others got ripped up in a jealous rage, had to fill the frames somehow.’

  ‘A picture’s worth a thousand words,’ Lisa said, knowing she’d guessed right and taking no pleasure in the knowledge.

  ‘You know why?’

  ‘No.’ There was no reason to make it easy. Let it be spelled out. She was done with letting people pass the buck, and especially when they wanted to pass the buck to her. Phone calls, even — people couldn’t end them, couldn’t take the responsibility of saying, as she did, ‘I’ve finished the call and I’m off.’ The next person who told her they were sure she had things to do would find out just how right they were. She raised her head and stared at Chrissie. Explain yourself, she thought. ‘No, I don’t know why. I thought we were having fun.’

  Chrissie looked at the floor, at the Chinese carpet, and briefly at Lisa again. ‘We were, but — I can’t see you any more.’

  ‘Why not?’ This was a multiple choice question, a trick question, if you like. If the answer was, in case X finds out, then she might make damned sure X did. It was not unknown for her to do it. This was where men and women differed. Women always wanted the partner to find out, men never did. Safer by far to have an affair with a man. She should tell Chrissie that.

  ‘I don’t love you any more,’came the answer, breathed rather than spoken, like a long sigh of regret.

  So it was as simple as that, Lisa thought.

  Ah, John, you lucky man.

  What could she say in reply? Impossible to make someone love you, or even love you again, the ‘any more’ suggesting that she had once. ‘You want to stay a Howard-and-Hilda,’ she said, almost without thinking.

  Silence. At the end of an affair, at the very end, not during one of those can’t-stay-with-you, can’t-leave-you periods, but at the end when weariness or worse, revulsion takes over, the end seems such a relief. That was how it was to Chrissie, now, she thought.

  Careful not to look at the laughing photographs, she picked her handbag up from the sofa and walked steadily across the room, not quickly as if she was afraid, not slowly as though she was waiting for a bid to stay.

  She walked through a cloud of Chrissie’s scent without looking at her, and she reached the door, opened it and headed out into the shade of Tooley Street.

  Out of sight of the apartment she breathed deeply, getting Chrissie’s scent out of her lungs.

  It might be finished, she thought.

  It might be finished, but when it hurt this much it wasn’t over.

  Not by any means.

  3

  James Wilder, naked, was eating his breakfast of Sharwood’s vindaloo sauce and rice. Breakfast was a recent habit. He’d gone from lean to thin, and thin, he thought, didn’t suit him. His tan was yellowing slightly but with his blond hair and the surfing shorts he’d taken to wearing he could pass for late twenties easily.

  And that was something to hang on to.

  He heard the letterbox clatter and put his curry down on the arm of the chair on his way to see what the postman had brought him this time.

  He picked up the letter from the dusty pine floor and took in the fact that it was stamped as opposed to Official Paid and that it was from Lydia, his ex-wife.

  He took the AS envelope into the lounge and propped it up against the television screen before continuing with his breakfast.

  His eyes were drawn back to the envelope as he ate.

  She’d written the address with her fountain pen, all black ink and flourishes. Impressive. And an improvement. Promotion, even; towards the end of their marriage she’d graced him with witty crayon-scribbled notes which said: Your dinner’s in the Asda bag, mine’s at Daphne’s. She’d made him live on dinners for one — and people said it wasn’t possible!

  So she didn’t hate him, did she, he thought, scraping the bowl. She might have told him their marriage was at an end but despite the divorce he didn’t for a moment believe it. Not even now, because at the weekends when he picked up their daughters she was always stunning for him, not a hair out of place. Last week she smiled him the brightest smile he’d ever seen. She’d had her amalgam fillings replaced with white ones, told him she thought the mercury might be rotting her brain, suggested it to him with a laugh. No comment, he’d said.

  He put the bowl on top of another on the floor which was nicely textured inside. In warm weather it only took four days for a pale lining of mould to grow in a bowl. And only a week for discs of green fungi to float like pallid islands in his coffee mugs.

  Hard to believe that in the concrete Venus era it had taken him weeks to get fungi to grow at all. Ah, all roads led to Lydia; all the roads of his thoughts.

  The Venuses, or as she had called them, Veni, had been born of one rubber mould which they’d sent off for after seeing an advert in a paper. It was technical stuff. They’d filled the mould with cement and supported it, after much discussion, between two planks in a dustbin.

  Wow, Lydia had been beautiful then, fawn hair flying in the wind as he’d mixed the cement, showing off to her. Her hair didn’t fly around now. She’d had it cut to start work, come home one day looking like a field mushroom, her hair reaching the top of her ears, not a lover any more and all ready to leave him behind.

  She’d been excited when the cement had dried.

  So had he. But when he’d peeled back the rubber he saw the mould had become grossly misshapen with the weight of the concrete, and the slender neck had thickened and the body wid
ened, and what they’d made was a flat-featured dwarf with a hump.

  Lydia had cried.

  Undaunted for once, he’d filled the dustbin with sand, which had acted as a bit of a support. It worked to the extent that the antenatal abnormalities weren’t as severe again but the truth was, the concrete Venuses never captured the beauty of the original. Their features were, at best, surly. He had buried them in the garden to age them, and that had been an effort he didn’t want to repeat, the burial of ten concrete statues with various disabilities. It was only through trial and error that they found the best way to encourage the weatherbeaten look was to cover them in yoghurt. The mould disguised their coarsened features.

  He and Lydia had sold the statues at an auction. They’d failed to reach the reserve, and he’d had to let them go at a knockdown price to save having to carry them home again. The auctioneer, scraping the mould with his thumb, had told the buyer encouragingly that with a bit of a scrub and a lick of paint, they would look as good as new. It seemed, he thought, such a long time ago.

  He was back to looking at the envelope.

  Uneasily, he felt a longing for the long-haired Lydia.

  She’d liked his ideas, once.

  He’d once heard her refer to him as The Great Schemer, and had been pleased. Shouldn’t have been; she’d meant it as an insult.

  And now she wants me back, he thought, getting hold of his Zuma Jay surf shorts, pulling them on, keeping his eye on the envelope leaning against the TV screen, seeing his name upon it: Mr J. Wilder, written with flair in black ink.

  Formal, that.

  She wants me back, he thought again, not believing it, not for a moment.

  They were years further on from the Venus days. They were two children further on. They were her job further on. They were divorced, two trains side-by-side and he’d thought he was the one who was moving until the other train pulled out of sight and he’d found himself still at the station. He hadn’t moved at all, not ever, not even now.

  He leaned over, reached for the envelope and stuck his forefinger under the flap, tearing it open. He could see the gilt edge of a card inside, and he eased it out. More extravagant writing. Dum-dum, dum-dum, dum-dum; his heart began lolloping in his chest and he made himself look at the black writing carefully. He read:

  We, Lydia Wilder and Charles Black,

  would like you to come to our wedding party.

  Do try, the girls want you to and Larry and Meg and

  your godson will be there.

  June 29th, ZOO p.m., at home. Black tie.

  He propped the card carefully against the television set again and stared at it, waiting for the pain to knock the breath out of him like a kick in the ribs.

  The malaise of grief crept up on him gradually, crushing him so tightly that he thought his ribs would crack. He felt his stomach contract, double him up, dum-dum, dum-dum, squeezing his heart into his ears.

  His gaze faded from the card and returned again. June the twenty-ninth. A lifetime away, he thought, nothing to worry about. He hadn’t lost her yet.

  He waited, trying to chase the pain, trying to confront it like he would a bully, but it didn’t go away.

  His heart was beating louder; sure and very persistent.

  He took a step backwards and clipped the spoon in the bowl on the floor. Curry splattered orange on his legs.

  He sat down as though the armchair might not be safe and he shut his eyes to listen to his heart.

  He would like it to stop. He had got the message.

  The message was that Lydia was not coming back.

  But it carried on mocking him.

  Dumb-dumb. Dumb-dumb. Dumb-dumb.

  4

  Megan, on her way to work, stopped at the lights and used the time to put on her lipstick.

  This was the point at which she forgot about banana skins and thought of work instead.

  She flicked up her sun shield and moved off with the traffic. The lipstick was her version of Superman’s phone box, it transformed her into She-Man.

  Unlike Megan the Mother who crouched under tables, She-Man haggled, seduced people from their jobs, took men to lunch and drove as if it were a competitive sport.

  All that from a lipstick? She smiled to herself.

  Not for nothing were lipsticks phallic in design.

  In the male-dominated industries of advertising agencies, advertisers and media owners, men did not want to get the impression that they were being interviewed by wives and mothers — that was something they got anyway after late nights and long lunches. They did not mind, however, being interviewed by She-Men wearing lipstick; woman in a man’s world, plus.

  In the eighties, to headhunters, looking after a client meant parties and sex. In the nineties it meant offering a long-term working partnership for their mutual benefit.

  Megan parked her car behind the grimy building and went up to the second floor.

  Despite the condition of the outside, the design of the inside gave the impression of stylish efficiency. The reception area looked cool with its polished pale floors. On the wall hung a clock with no digits, and adjacent to it, a set of paintings with a dot of ultramarine positioned in different areas of the canvas.

  ‘Hi, Laura,’ Megan said to the receptionist. ‘Is Zelda in yet?’

  ‘What do you think?’ Zelda Colgin, wife of Gerry, who owned the company, was having sleepless nights. ‘I’ve been here since the crack of dawn.’ She was walking along the corridor from the kitchen, eight months pregnant and tired of it. Her short dark hair had a streak of premature grey down the front, like a flash. She held her hand-painted porcelain cup up over her bump. ‘Who’s been shortlisted for the ANI search?’

  ‘David Elsworth, John Parrish and Steven Dyke. ANI said they’d let us know today.’ In the background Megan could hear the phones start to ring. She walked into the office and reached for the nearest one. ‘Hello?’

  ‘Mrs Fitzgerald? It’s Gary Barnes.’

  Megan grinned. ‘Mrs Fitzgerald is just coming.’ Zelda’s code names were never subtle. She put her hand over the receiver. ‘Gary Barnes for you.’

  ‘Thanks.’ Zelda put the cup on her desk and took the phone, suddenly coming to life, all tiredness gone. ‘Gary!’ her tone was warm and effusive, almost seductive. ‘Gary, Gary, I’ve got to tell you, you’re ninety-nine percent what they’re looking for. Will they find the hundred percenter? Does anyone? I’ll let you know as soon as I hear. Probably by the end of the week. ‘Bye, Gary.’ She put the phone down and dropped the smile, looking at Megan.

  Megan returned her gaze. ‘So how’s Gary?’ she asked.

  ‘The truth is, he’s not up to it, he’s still a bit young, too much one of the lads. I’ll ring him on Thursday, let him know diplomatically that it’s not for him.’ She grinned suddenly. ‘Poor old Gary. He was doing quite well in his interview until he said the person he most admired in the world was himself’ She looked at the tea in her cup and flicked out some stray tealeaves.

  Nigel, who dealt with graduate recruitment, had finished his three-way conversation and was stretching noisily at his desk in the corner of the room. Graduates approached early retained a loyalty to the company which became useful further along the line in their careers. His phone started ringing and he dropped his arm out of the stretch and grabbed it. ‘Hel-lo? Kensington Nannies? Right, one moment. Zelda, it’s for you.’

  Megan watched Zelda hurry to the phone. She got through more nannies than a rutting goat, Megan thought. She looked at Nigel, and wondered whether it was his goatee beard that had made her think of the metaphor.

  Her phone rang and she picked it up. It was someone she’d arranged to interview the following day and was keen on meeting. ‘Simon! You can’t make tomorrow lunchtime? How about tomorrow evening? That’s fine. Around six? You want it later, all right, six-thirty, seven? Seven, I’ve got that down.’ Shame, she wouldn’t see Bill. ‘Is Mario’s still convenient? Mario’s at seven. See you later.’ She
put the phone down, and almost immediately it rang again.

  It was a call confirming an appointment that afternoon.

  Megan replaced the receiver and stretched her legs. ‘Alistair Hoe,’ she said to Nigel. ‘Remember him? We interviewed him as a graduate and he’s been at Myles Cunningham since 94. I’m meeting him in Knightsbridge — he’s got an hour to spare and doesn’t want to waste time getting here.’

  ‘Are you thinking of him for sales at R&B?’

  ‘He’s a possible. He says he’s quite happy where he is but he didn’t turn down the chance of an interview.’

  ‘I remember Alistair,’ Nigel said, and laughed. He raised his arms over his head and flexed his hands until the bones cracked.

  ‘He got a third, didn’t he? I was the one who interviewed him originally. I liked him. To get a third implies spectacular indifference. Question is, is he a worker or a shirker?’

  Megan, still bracing herself for the cracking bones, was only half-listening. She laughed. ‘He’s certainly not stupid. What did you get, Nigel?’ she asked.

  ‘Five “0” levels. Same as John Major.’

  ‘Richard Branson got two.’

  ‘Just think what he could have done if he’d got a degree!’ Megan laughed. ‘Yeah, he could have become a headhunter, couldn’t he, Zelda.’

  Zelda made a face and headed back to her office, rubbing her back.

  ‘Anyway, I’m off out,’ Nigel said, getting to his feet. ‘I’m giving a talk to some graduates up north.’

  Megan frowned and looked up at him. ‘Up north?’

  ‘Watford.’

  Megan laughed and turned as Zelda came back in. ‘I’ve just had Triton on the phone. They’re looking for a broadcast director and if we can pull this one they’d be very useful financially to have as clients. They’ve briefed one other recruitment company. Can you work on the initial brief?’ she asked, patting her rounded stomach as dispassionately as she would a beer belly.

  ‘Sure,’ Megan said.

  ‘We’ve got a couple of researchers onto it,’ Zelda said. ‘I’ll talk to you later about getting someone to fill in while I’m on maternity leave.’