Striking a Balance

by Curtis, Norma

She reached for the skirt and pulled it up over her trousers, her face flaming with anger checked by fear. She hated being afraid. She stood up and glared at him.

  He watched her impassively back, the coldness gone. He’d had his own way and was content.

  She began to roll up the trousers again.

  ‘Just get out,’ he said, and she picked up her bag in a hurry and left the trousers alone.

  ‘Take it from me,’ he said calmly, ‘you know nothing, you understand nothing, about my wife, or me.’

  Yeah, she thought, leaving the table, interview over. She tried to push the trouser leg up again.

  ‘Get out!’

  She was going. She misjudged it. She’d seriously misjudged it.

  But sooner or later it would be payback time for John King.

  She would see to that.

  10

  The weekend was spent helping Larry make lists.

  He made lists of people to ring, lists of people he’d already rung, people he wouldn’t touch with a bargepole, people to have drinks with.

  By Monday morning, the ninth of June and the first day of Larry’s unemployment, Megan was having breakfast in her green linen dress and wondering why Larry was working twice as hard now he was unemployed as he ever did before.

  She’d just finished her toast when Larry came downstairs in his suit.

  Wow,’ she said, looking up from the folded Independent in front of her, ‘I thought you were going to have a lie-in?’

  Larry sat at the table opposite her and picked up the packet of All-Bran that had fallen over on the yellow cloth and poured some into his bowl. He looked up at Megan and grinned. ‘I’m all ready for Project Employment,’ he said as Ruth came in from the hall and tossed a letter onto the table. Larry grabbed it and opened it carelessly.

  ‘What is it?’ Megan asked, reaching for her mug of coffee. ‘Wedding invitation,’ he said, passing it to her. ‘Lydia’s managed to get Charles to do the decent thing.’

  ‘Hardly a challenge, is it,’ Megan said. They’d heard all about Charles from James. She looked at the stiff white card and read Lydia’s handwriting. ‘She wants us there for James. Sort of minders. Six o’clock at the register office.’ Although she’d said it flippantly, reading the invitation gave her a pang of nostalgia for the olden days. The truth was, she thought to herself, she didn’t like change. She far preferred things to stay as they were.

  ‘She’s nuts to leave him,’ Ruth said, coming up behind her and reading the invitation over her shoulder. ‘James is so husky. She’s absolutely nuts.’

  ‘Nuts,’ Bill shouted from under the table.

  ‘Yeah,’ Megan said, but she knew that Lydia hadn’t really been nuts at all. She’d done it simply out of a sense of self-preservation.

  The truth was, James did things to excess. The fact that he’d got Lydia pregnant and that she’d had twins had been an example. He did everything to excess except work. Work was something he didn’t bother with at all.

  James and Larry had met at school around the age of eight and had, surprisingly, stayed friends. It was an attraction of opposites combined with mutual admiration. Larry envied James’s general recklessness, and James admired Larry’s easy-going nature, but the point was, neither of them had the slightest desire to change places.

  The friendship had survived expulsion from school on James’s side and university on Larry’s. There had been a lull in the relationship when James had married Lydia and the twins were born, but Megan’s presence in Larry’s life had evened the score again and for a few years the two families had met frequently.

  The friendship had changed down a gear when Lydia had left home, taking the girls with her.

  James had been hurt, and then angry, and finally, disbelieving. He’d looked after the girls while Lydia had worked, mainly by default, it was true, but he couldn’t believe that they’d gone for good.

  Nor could Megan, at first.

  Out of all their friends, this was the first separation. There was something alarming about it. It opened up possibilities.

  Megan shivered and reached for her coffee. For a while she’d hoped Lydia and James could have got back together. James seemed to think they would, but James’s mind worked on different lines from the rest of the world. It all seemed unfinished, Megan thought. She felt an ache inside her. The truth was that when Lydia left James she hadn’t only deserted him, she’d deserted Larry and Megan, too.

  For a long time afterwards Megan had waited anxiously, then sadly, for Lydia to call. Months later, when the call finally came, it was somehow too late. Lydia had quietly got on with things, found a flat for herself and the girls, met Charles and been promoted, like some government advice video made to give divorce a good name.

  In Lydia’s absence they’d found themselves allied with James. James would come round night after night with a bottle of Scotch and get drunk with Larry.

  Bill had been just one, then. After one particularly drunken night Megan had confronted Larry and James and considered divorcing them both — Lydia, she’d thought, would have laughed at that.

  Megan put the invitation on the table and read the last line again: Please could you come to keep an eye on James? All love, Lydia.

  It was friendly enough. But it stirred up all sorts of emotions that she’d thought had gone away.

  Ruth sat down, reached for the invitation and studied it carefully. ‘Are you going to go?’

  Megan looked at Larry across the table. ‘Are we?’

  ‘We don’t know that James is going yet. If he isn’t, we’re probably not expected to. I’ll give him a ring.’

  Megan put on her green linen jacket. ‘Give him my love.’

  ‘And mine,’ Ruth said.

  Megan went round the table to kiss Larry. ‘Hope it goes well today.’

  ‘Yes. I’ll be in Mike Reeve’s office all morning,’ Larry said, rubbing the palms of his hands together. He glanced at Ruth. ‘Might take Bill out this afternoon, take him off your hands.’

  ‘You can’t,’ Ruth said possessively, flicking her blonde hair away from her face, ‘we’ve already got plans.’

  ‘Got to go,’ Megan said, seeing a storm brewing. She picked up her bag and looked under the tablecloth for Bill. ‘Bye, Bill.’

  Bill emerged from his hideout and hugged her legs, and he and Larry waved her off from the door.

  *

  From Reeve’s office, when he’d run out of lists, Larry rang James to tell him the news, which was that he had temporarily joined the ranks of the unemployed.

  ‘Signed on yet?’ James asked.

  ‘It’s not worth it. I won’t be entitled to anything for three months and I’ll be employed again by then,’ Larry said.

  James laughed heartily at that. ‘Sign on now, mate. In three months’ time they’ll just about have sorted out your claim.’

  Larry wasn’t in the mood for James’s streetwise pessimism. ‘Got a wedding invitation from Lydia,’ he said, changing the subject.

  James’s chuckling faded instantly, like a radio being turned off. ‘Oh. Well tell Meg not to buy a hat,’ he said after a moment. ‘It’s not going to happen, Larry. She’s doing it to worry me. Listen, Larry, let’s have lunch. I know a little place off the A40.’

  Larry had been planning to have lunch in a restaurant in which he would bump into people in the business. On the other hand he could leave high-profile lunching for another day. Then a thought occurred to him. ‘I haven’t got a car,’ he said.

  ‘I’ll be in Soho later this morning. I’ll pick you up. Give me the address.’

  So he gave James the address of Reeve’s office in Wardour Street and they planned to meet later. As he put the phone down, Mike Reeve came into the office, straightening his Hermes tie. ‘Help yourself to the fax, copier and Janie. Just don’t answer the phone,’ he said. ‘A week should do it. Good luck, mate.’

  Larry waited until he’d gone and then he sat behind his desk. He rested his palms on it
and imagined he’d got Reeve’s job. A week should do it, he thought happily. He smoothed his palms over the cool wood grain. Next to Reeve’s keyboard was a mouse mat with a crossword on it. The squares were all blank. Larry looked at it for a few minutes and resisted the urge to fill it in for him. He took out his ancient Filofax and turned to his business card holder to check whether he had missed anyone out.

  Having put out the word that he was available, he then rang a headhunting firm who had been on to him in the past. Nice, he thought, rubbing his scarred eyebrow, if he could get a job without Megan’s help.

  At the end of the morning he was tired but hopeful. By lunchtime he was just tired, and more than ready for a pub lunch off the A40.

  *

  ‘Larry! You bastard,’ James greeted him.

  His mind full of job prospects, Larry shook his head to clear it and grinned. ‘You know more than I do,’ he said.

  ‘Get in.’ James pushed a newspaper off the passenger seat onto the floor and Larry got in and sat down on the black, cracked leather seats of the Rover 90. ‘You’ll like this pub. Hundred and three varieties of beer. I’m working my way through them.’

  Larry leaned forward and rubbed the windscreen with his hand before realising that the grey coating was not condensation but dirt.

  ‘Wipers are out. Won’t need them today — look at the weather.’ James reached for a piece of newspaper and got out of the car. He cleaned the windscreen vigorously on Larry’s side and got back in again.

  It was a hot day, he was right. Larry thought that rain might do the car a bit of good, but he said nothing. He glanced at James. He looked as though he’d given up eating. His tan was yellowing slightly, but his hair was as blond as ever.

  As they drove, Larry told him about the takeover. If Larry had been hoping for a sympathetic ear — and he had — he soon found that James didn’t possess one as far as jobs went.

  ‘Why tie yourself down, mate?’ James said as he drove. ‘I mean, look at me. What do you see?’

  Larry looked. He looked at the shorts and the thin face and the tanned legs and the tangled fair hair, a little too long for a man in his thirties, and he thought: I see a waster.

  ‘Go on, tell me what you see,’ James said, glancing at him with his light eyes urging.

  Larry dodged the question. ‘It’s all right for you,’ he said. ‘What you don’t have you don’t miss.’

  ‘I’ve worked,’ James said. ‘I worked in a tax office once. It was years ago. Went to sign on and they gave me a job, it was bloody awful. Do this, do that. Get up early. Wear a suit.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘The best thing I ever did was look after the twins. Best time of my life. I would have educated them at home, too, except Lydia put her foot down. School of life, Larry, school of life. It teaches you everything you need to know.’

  ‘What’s it taught you, James?’

  ‘It’s taught me not to work.’

  Larry exhaled loudly. ‘It’s different for you,’ he said after a moment. ‘I like working. I know who I am when I work.’

  ‘Sad,’ James said, ‘sad.’ He changed gear. He was silent for a long time and Larry had begun pursuing thoughts of his own when he next spoke. ‘So you bastards are going to the wedding,’ he said.

  Larry thought he detected a certain amount of animosity in the statement. ‘Only to look after you,’ he said. The sun was hot and he wanted to let some air in. He reached for the winder but couldn’t shift it.

  ‘It’s jammed,’ James said. ‘I’ll fix it tomorrow. And I don’t need looking after.’

  Larry grinned. ‘That’s okay. I think we’ve only been invited to keep you under control.’

  James straightened his arms as they gripped the wheel and seemed pleased. ‘That so? Think you’ll manage it?’

  The atmosphere in the car lifted. They were on the A40 now and picking up speed.

  Larry pulled down the sun visor and saw his eyes framed in the rectangle of the mirror. It was very hot and he could feel the sweat breaking out on his forehead, but he reminded himself of the beer he would have in the pub. He could almost taste it in his throat. He could feel the froth popping gently on his lips.

  Suddenly he was aware of a change, only very slight, in the sound of the car. It was like a metallic buzzing, a low grade interference on the radio. It seemed to be coming from under his seat.

  ‘I want her back, Larry,’ James said forcefully. ‘I can give her more than Charles Black ever could. I can give her a life.’

  Larry was hardly listening to what James was saying. He was concentrating on the noise. It was getting louder and it was like something vibrating in a box, that was the nearest he could get to it, something vibrating in an enclosed space. He glanced at James and saw that James could hear it now. James looked back at him, frowning, equally puzzled. He glanced at the back seat.

  The noise slowly lifted up around them, intensifying, darkening the car like black smoke, and Larry found himself sitting in a cloud of flies.

  He panicked and as he tried to swat them off he saw they were clustering on the windscreen, covering it, and James was sweeping his hand across it like a wiper but as soon as they lifted they settled straight back on it again, heading for daylight.

  James slammed on the brakes, shouting, ‘Bloody hell!’ and the car skidded sideways for what seemed a long time.

  There was a smell of burning rubber and Larry felt the seat belt cut into his neck. He braced himself for the impact, shielding his face in his hands.

  When nothing hit them he undid his seat belt in a sudden panic and flung open the door, scrambling out onto the pavement, brushing himself frantically. He could feel the flies everywhere, all over him, under his clothes, in his hair. He tore off his shirt and stood by the curb, shaking his shirt, his heart pounding as the noise of car horns blasted around them.

  James was still in the car. He was trying to shoo the flies out but was only managing to stir the busy mass momentarily.

  ‘Got a paper on you?’

  Larry pointed to the one that had been by his feet and James picked it up and began slapping round the interior of the car. Larry winced as purply-red stains smeared the passenger window.

  A few flies drifted lazily out and flew away.

  Larry gave his shirt another shake before pulling it on. He fastened it slowly. Two of the buttons were missing.

  He stared at the car. Nothing would induce him to get back in until the flies had all gone. He had never experienced anything so disgusting, so repulsive in his life as the feel of those flies on him.

  The traffic was bottlenecking behind them and he didn’t care.

  James finally got out of the car, shaking his head and sticking his fingers up at the cars behind.

  ‘What the hell happened, James? Have you got something dead in there?’

  James was scratching his head. He looked bemused. ‘Dropped some maggots on the floor on Saturday,’ he said. ‘Hell of a thing. Didn’t manage to get them all out. Felt quite nice though, didn’t they? Cool and fuzzy. Would’ve thought flies were hot.’ He shook his head again and looked at Larry with his pale eyes. ‘Tell you something, mate, I need that drink.’ He got back into the car.

  Larry looked inside it.

  He wasn’t going to ask what James was doing sprinkling maggots on the floor of his car.

  He got back in reluctantly and shut the door, trying not to look at the smears.

  Need that drink? The understatement of the century. Friend or not, he couldn’t help but think it was probably the smartest move Lydia’d ever made, leaving James.

  11

  Megan was jumping the gun by checking the database against the Triton brief, but a couple of people had sprung to mind and she liked to see whether the researchers had been doing their job in providing an accurate list of candidates. She was jotting down notes when Zelda came in.

  ‘I want a word,’ Zelda said.

  Megan swivelled her chair.

  ‘It’s
about the cover for my maternity leave,’ Zelda said. ‘We agreed on what we wanted —’

  ‘A consultant,’ Megan confirmed, pushing her blonde hair away from her forehead and guessing what was to come. ‘But you’ve found someone else, equally suitable.’

  ‘You’ve been bugging my phone,’ Zelda said in mock astonishment. ‘Well, yes, it’s Lisa Ashridge. Gerry suggested her, as a matter of fact. She worked at TVS for four years then went to Carlton when they lost the franchise — she knows the media back to front.’

  ‘But she doesn’t know anything about headhunting, does she?’

  ‘She knows how it works. I’ve interviewed her in the past. She’d work for you, rather than replace me. It could work.’

  ‘I’ve picked her brains myself a couple of times and you’re right, she’s got her finger on the pulse, but we’d be taking a flyer, wouldn’t we? And why would she want to leave Carlton for a temporary job that she’s never done before?’

  ‘She wants more strings to her bow, never a bad idea. She’s not going to be stuck for a job, is she? She’s got an excellent reputation.’ Zelda paused. She gave a little smile. ‘And she’s single.’

  ‘No one to rush home to in the evenings, you mean,’ Megan said. ‘I wouldn’t be too sure about that. There must be quite a few wives out there who have made Lisa models out of Ikea candles.’

  ‘Rumours,’ Zelda said dismissively. She rubbed her abdomen. ‘You’d be in charge but Lisa would be an extra, and useful, pair of hands. She knows who to chat up.’

  ‘She’s had plenty of practice at that.’

  ‘I want to see if we can arrange for her to come in this afternoon. If you don’t think it will work, we’ll carry on looking. Give her a chance, that’s all I ask. By the way, how’s Larry getting on?’

  Megan rubbed her temple. He’d hijacked the postman, planted weeds, dug up bulbs, annoyed Ruth, tidied the attic and been circling the business pages every night when she’d got home. She assumed this wasn’t what Zelda was asking. ‘Fine. Still available.’

  ‘Any idea why Xylus didn’t keep him on?’

  ‘No.’