by Andy Jones
‘What about your folks?’
Zoe took a deep breath, blew it out in a long steady stream. She already knew she would ask, and that her parents would agree to lend her the money. It would be a loan, of course, but there would be no rush and no interest. Still, it felt appropriate at least to pretend that it wasn’t a foregone conclusion. Alex’s father had died when he was twelve, and his mother had struggled to raise him and his brother, working several jobs, taking in ironing and buying groceries at the end of their shelf life or in bashed packaging to make their meagre means go further.
‘I’ll ask,’ Zoe had said.
But even with the loan from her parents, their options were limited. For months, they spent their weekends and evenings viewing neglected flats and squashed houses at the far reaches of the various tube lines. ‘Doer-uppers’ in estate agent speak; places where a couple with vision could ‘place their stamp’. But despite the peeling paint, bad wallpaper and worn carpets, it was an exciting time. They drank in a variety of oppressive pubs, scribbling notes on the property sheets and exercising not so much their vision, but a pragmatic blindness towards the scowling locals and depressed high streets lined with poundshops, bookmakers and whitewashed windows. Balancing the variables in their small equation – size, setting, squalor – they settled on a ‘cosy’ house in tired but serviceable repair, two tube stops or a good walk from a fashionable area with trendy bars. There was no Starbucks or organic deli, but they did have a Sainsbury’s Local and two pubs that it felt reasonably safe to drink in. They were further encouraged by the high proportion of what Alex called ‘PLUs’ – People Like Us: young professionals in nice shoes, returning home from gainful employment, who would, with their collective optimism and need for good coffee, drag the area up to par with its near neighbours.
The baby hadn’t happened. Not that it would; you needed to stop taking the pill first, and before you did that, it was considered polite to discuss the matter with the man donating the other half of the genetic goods. And Zoe wasn’t ready for that conversation; the maternal pangs had passed, replaced by more practical concerns – a pay rise, new windows, taps that didn’t drip. A clearer sense of herself, perhaps. Neither had they discussed marriage in anything other than an indirect fashion, but then, they had only been living together for nine months. And, again, a conversation Zoe was in no immediate hurry to hold. She wants these things – a husband, children, family – but . . . well, she’d at least like to sort out the carpets first.
She remembers clearly the day they moved in, and the memory makes her smile. They had a supper of fish and chips, and champagne out of coffee mugs. She remembers Alex saying he would ‘wash the dishes’ before scrunching up the chip paper and tossing it nonchalantly over his shoulder. She remembers sleeping on an inflatable mattress for two weeks before their bed arrived; Alex inviting her every night to ‘climb aboard the Love Boat’. The airbed would deflate slowly overnight, so that if they slept for more than seven hours they would wake to find themselves grounded on the floorboards. It took them half a day to assemble the new bed; Alex giving himself blisters from gripping the handle of their cheap screwdriver. That evening, sitting in front of the TV, Zoe had kissed his sore hands and one thing had led smoothly to another. They had laughed afterwards at the irony of spending four hours assembling a bed only to make love on a lumpy sofa. She feels nothing but love recalling these moments of simple affection and spontaneous intimacy. Focus on the positive, she tells herself. Forget the patches of paint on the bedroom wall, the creaky floorboard, the toothpaste on the bathroom mirror – focus on the way he kissed you this morning, the way he looks at you when he’s horny; think about the romantic gestures (a Valentine’s Day trail of M&Ms leading from the front door to the bedroom where her man lay waiting with a bottle of fizz on the bedside table. Laughable really, but she knows that’s part of the point.). Focus on his hair, his footballer’s bum and the fact that he got out of bed to fetch breakfast in bed. Wherever that got to.
Henry
The Stone Stairs Don’t Creak
He saw Bobbi tonight, out there beyond the croquet lawn. She lives in Spain now, but has come back to be one of April’s bridesmaids. Henry wonders what her dress will be like; will her cleavage be on display? Her toned back and shoulders?
At dinner Brian had insisted it was part of the best man’s responsibility to drink anything the groom didn’t. By ten o’clock he was bouncing off the walls and in danger of putting his elbow through a priceless vase. Henry and his father – a professional in the art of manoeuvring drunks – escorted Brian up to bed. As they walked back down the stairs to join the rest of the party, his father put a heavy arm around Henry’s shoulders. Henry remembers asking his father to show him his muscles when he was a boy. He recalls his awe at seeing his old man’s bicep contract into a hard mass that conjured the image of nothing less impressive and destructive than a cannon ball. Clive Smith cupped the side of his son’s face and stroked his cheek. The gesture seeming to say, You’ll be alright, son. Everything will be alright.
As his father detoured into the gents, Henry found himself alone for what felt like the first time in a long time. All day he had been surrounded by people, posing for photographs, organizing, smiling. And this small moment of solitude felt like a glass of cold water. Instead of rejoining the dwindling party, Henry doubled back on himself and slipped out of a side door into the castle grounds. He wondered if April might be having the same idea, and hoped not. But he imagined she would be in bed by now, face stripped of make-up, hair plaited to keep it free from knots. It was cold and Henry shivered as he walked around the front lawn, staying close to the perimeter where he would be less noticeable against the bordering hedges. As the castle receded behind him, Henry wondered how long a person could survive outside in this cold – it can’t have been more than two or three degrees – wearing nothing more than a pair of jeans and a t-shirt. It was refreshing, though, and Henry enjoyed the sharp sensation of cold in his scalp and across his back; he embraced it and walked on towards the koi carp pond at the far end of the grounds.
Looking out of the window now, Henry imagines he sees himself sneaking across the wide lawn, the idea of absconding forming in some sub-cellar of his mind. Cold wind leaks around the old diamond-shaped panes. Beside the window is an armchair, upon which Henry’s wool jumper sits like a grey, curled-up cat. He pulls it on, continuing to stare out into the dark.
As he had approached the pond, Henry saw a shape and stopped walking. Someone, a woman, was sitting at a bench and he wondered if April had ventured out after all. He stood still, breathing silently, contemplating a slow retreat when, his eyes adjusting to the dark, the shape at the bench resolved itself into the familiar form of Bobbi. The varsity undercut grown out now, her indecisive ringlets once again rolling free in a thousand different directions. Henry exhaled and Bobbi turned to face him.
‘Penelope,’ she said. ‘What you doing out here?’
‘Freezing.’
Bobbi, wrapped up inside a thick coat, patted the bench beside her. ‘Snuggle in,’ she said. Henry sat and Bobbi put an arm around his shoulders, kissing him firmly but chastely on the cheek. ‘God. You’re like ice.’
‘I’m a tough guy.’
‘In your dreams. Nervous?’
Henry laughed. ‘Too late for that now.’
‘You said it, Penelope.’
And what he wanted to do was fuck Bobbi right there on the soft, cold mud. He imagined that her body was communicating the same need to his. He felt certain that if he were to turn to her, thread his fingers into her curls and pull her face to his, she would respond fully – pushing her tongue into his mouth, pressing her face hard against his own. He would unbutton her jeans, push them down past the curve of her arse and around her legs and – without a word said by either of them, neither caution nor encouragement – they would fuck with no one but the moon as witness. They would pull their clothes on, kiss like old friends, and never talk abo
ut or acknowledge what they had done. When he saw her in the morning, she would smile as if nothing had happened, and Henry might even wonder if it had.
Sitting beside her, feeling her heat radiate into him through their layers of clothes, Henry said, ‘It’s late.’
Bobbi made a sound at the back of her throat – uh huh.
He wanted to kiss Bobbi goodnight, just a kiss on the cheek, but didn’t dare. He walked away from the bench, back to the castle, back to his wedding party. He drank two large whiskies in quick succession, forced a big idiot grin, said goodnight to those still hanging on and trudged upstairs to ‘get my beauty sleep’. ‘Too late now,’ the men chorused, and everybody laughed. No doubt about it now, though, he is going to look awful today. He glances at the clock – 3.49 – and his eyes feel raw and swollen with fatigue.
Again, he asks himself the question: Which is worse, marrying the wrong woman, or jilting her on her wedding day?
The question begs another: Who is the right woman?
Not Bobbi, he knows that much. She is too . . . transient, perhaps. Insubstantial, maybe. But whatever Bobbi lacks, she has something April doesn’t. She does something, moves something, kindles something that his fiancée doesn’t. And whatever it is, it diminishes April.
Not sleeping with a bridesmaid on the night before your wedding is, Henry knows, nothing to be proud about. But he is nevertheless glad that he didn’t. It would confuse things. Guilt encouraging him to stay; an illicit orgasm urging him to leave.
Besides the clothes he wore yesterday, Henry has a clean t-shirt to wear in the morning and then his rented tux for the ceremony. Hanging on the back of the bathroom door is a new white shirt, never worn. He has a coat, his phone and his wallet. He has keys to the brand new front door he is supposed to open in two weeks’ time before carrying his new bride across the threshold.
Sitting on a low antique desk is a pad of paper, printed with the castle’s letterhead. Henry takes a seat at the desk, picks up the complimentary biro and begins to write. He covers a single sheet of paper without looking up, then folds it neatly in half, resisting the impulse to read his unspeakable words. He stands from the desk, rolls the stiffness from his neck and pulls on his coat.
Walking towards the door he looks at Brian, as still and quiet as the hills, sleeping the sleep of a contented, uncomplicated man. He puts his hand to his friend’s head, not sure what the gesture means or why he is making it. Daring Brian, perhaps, to stir in his sleep and ask Henry what the hell is he doing?
Brian snuffles, groans and rolls onto his opposite side, turning his back on Henry.
The windowless corridor is pitch black and Henry holds a hand to the wall, feeling his way as he creeps forwards to the top of the staircase. At school they had read Great Expectations. Henry hadn’t enjoyed it, but a few images remain. He recalls Pip sneaking downstairs to steal something – food, he thinks, the image of a pork pie making Henry’s stomach rumble. As Pip crept, the stairs creaked, seeming to shout ‘Stop thief!’ at every step. Henry remembers some dark character threatening to gut the boy – to remove and cook his liver – if he failed in his task, and Henry suspects he will suffer a fate no less gruesome if he is discovered on these stairs. The other memory is of Pip’s benefactor, Miss Havisham, jilted by her betrothed, and now as pathetic and ruined as her decaying, infested wedding cake.
Henry pushes the thought away.
The stone stairs don’t creak and Henry finds himself in the entrance hall of the castle. The double wooden doors are bolted top, centre and bottom, but he is not sure if they are also locked with a key. The bolts slide open with no more noise than the cracking of a knuckle – one, two, three. Henry glances about the hallway and up the stairs but sees no one, hears nothing. He takes hold of the door handle – a heavy iron hoop wider than his fist – and twists. The sound of the lock’s mechanism echoes loudly in the open space, a heavy three-part ka-ka-klunk. Henry and the castle hold their breath, and the absconder fancies he can hear his own heartbeat. And then . . . the sound of movement.
Very slowly, Henry turns his head to the right, towards the room allocated to the Smith party this past evening. Through the open door the room is still and dark. Dark except for a single pool of light cast by a table lamp adjacent to a deep, wing-backed leather armchair. His father leans forwards, his shadowed face expressionless, the black hair falling across his forehead in messy strands. His parents fought again last night and Henry wonders if his father harboured any doubts before his own wedding night. And if he could turn back the clock, would he act on them?
Father and son stare at each other with such calm stillness that Henry wonders if it couldn’t be a dream, or its dark cousin. Henry takes a deep slow breath; he nods towards his father. Big Boots raises his hand and Henry sees he is holding a cut-glass tumbler a quarter-filled with amber liquid. His father tilts the glass in Henry’s direction – a gesture of farewell – and relaxes back into the shadow of his chair. Henry steps out into the cold night, the first suggestions of grey infusing themselves into the black sky.
And he is gone.
Zoe
He Used To Be A DJ
Her stomach groans and she feels suddenly nauseous with hunger; too hungry to wait for Alex to bring her breakfast in bed. Zoe shakes out the duvet, plumps up the pillows and finishes dressing: a pair of knee-length shorts and the t-shirt Alex says makes her boobs look nice.
As she walks down the stairs, Zoe stops in front of a framed black and white photograph – one of five hung along the incline of these thirteen steps – showing her and Alex surrounded by boxes on the day they moved in. They had positioned Alex’s camera on the mantelpiece and set the timer. When the mechanical shutter on the fifty-year-old Leica had eventually snapped open, it had caught Zoe laughing at some comment – she can’t remember what – made by Alex. He was looking at her, amused and in love, while her face was creased with the beginnings of laughter – mouth partially open, eyes half closed. Knowing they had missed their cue, they reset the camera to take a ‘proper’ picture. But when Zoe had looked over the prints some weeks later, this was the one she chose to have enlarged and framed. Our place, she thinks, smiling.
‘You home?’ she calls, as she takes the last few steps at a trot. ‘Alex? Babes?’
Although Zoe hadn’t really expected to find Alex hidden inside his headphones, she is still disappointed to find he is not in the living room. She looks through the kitchen window into their ‘yarden’, but he is not home. She flicks on the kettle then opens the fridge to see what she can rustle up for breakfast. They have eggs, but no butter and no milk. There is a jar of jam and a tub of hummus, but they have no bread and the hummus looks worryingly bubbled. Half a cucumber, a single red pepper, a block of cheese, dry and cracked where someone – it could be her – failed to wrap it properly, and half a jar of olives. Mustard, anchovies, pesto, a swig of apple juice and a bottle of champagne. Zoe thought they had finished the fizz, but it seems Alex has found what must surely be the final bottle from their moving-in haul. Maybe they’ll take it with them on their bike ride this afternoon. She notices the freezer door has not been closed properly and her first instinct is to be annoyed, but this is followed quickly by a pang of guilt. Her shins had been itching in the night, and when she’d told Alex, he had got out of bed to fetch ice cubes for her to hold against her skin. It had worked, too. And how many men would do that for you on a Baltic October night?
She puts two eggs in a saucepan full of boiling water and goes out into the yarden to extract the bicycles from the shed. The sun is out and despite the month it is warm, so Zoe eats her breakfast and drinks a mug of black tea, sitting on a folding chair outside. When she has finished, Alex is still not home so she finds her phone and calls him. She calls twice, but each time it rings through to voicemail, so she leaves two separate messages asking – with good humour, because the rest of this glorious day is still ahead of them and she doesn’t want to spoil it by starting an argument – whe
re the hell he has got to with her breakfast. She paces the living room, trying to recall exactly what he said before leaving:
I’ll bring you breakfast in bed?
Or was it I’ll be back before breakfast?
Either way, he’s late. She seems to remember him saying he had to ‘get some stuff’, but maybe he’d said ‘do some stuff’ – although what stuff she can’t imagine. The thought suggests itself again: What if he’s cheating on you?
But repeating the question does nothing to clarify the answer.
It occurs to her that he might be playing football. She checks the cupboard where he keeps his kit but everything appears to be there, mud-caked boots and all. Angry now, she calls his phone a third time, but when he fails to answer she resists the impulse to leave a message – the thought that something has happened to him has occurred to her and her anger is mixed with anxiety. She calls Darren, his best friend, but Darren hasn’t heard from Alex since Wednesday. When Zoe says she hasn’t seen him since around ten, Darren laughs and says, ‘Typical. Probably bumped into someone and lost track of time, you know what he’s like.’ And while it rings true, it feels wrong. Darren wants to chat, he starts off on a ‘Remember that time—’ but Zoe is too distracted – too worried – to listen to an Alex anecdote, and she cuts Darren short, saying she has to go, then hanging up before he has finished a protracted goodbye.
Her heart is beating quickly, and Zoe realizes she is holding her breath. She forces herself to stand still, stop pacing, and breathe. If she stays in the house she’ll drive herself mental, so Zoe makes the decision to walk up the road and see if, as Darren suggested, he’s fallen into a coffee shop or the pub. Maybe there’s a game on. Zoe has no clue when the football season starts or ends, but it seems there’s always a match to catch. She has lost count of the times when, walking past a pub, Alex has stopped to look through the window at the big screen, ‘Just checking the score, babes.’ And more than once – the boyish smile, the funny head wobble – he has convinced her to go inside for a drink and watch the rest of the game.
