Not Funny Not Clever

by Jo Verity

  And what about the girls’ names? Angel and Mimi. Oh dear. Those names wouldn’t have been out of place on the ‘business cards’ she caught sight of in phone kiosks around Soho.

  She rolled onto her back and took several deep breaths. As a child, when she couldn’t get off to sleep her mother used to tell her to think about your day, Elizabeth. (It was a given that every childhood day was jam-packed with agreeable events.) At this moment, her only hope of falling asleep was to stop thinking about her day.

  The details of the room started to reveal themselves in dawn’s dark greys and dusky purples. A milk float stop-started its way along the road outside, the chink of bottles accompanying its intermittent whine finally lulling her into shallow sleep.

  At nine o’clock, when Elizabeth stumbled downstairs, Diane was sitting at the breakfast table reading the paper and Carl was outside the back door cleaning his shoes.

  ‘Juice? Coffee?’ Diane asked.

  ‘Please.’

  ‘Did you get any sleep?’

  ‘Not really. I drifted but it’s not the same, is it? I’m feeling faintly woozy. As though I’ve been to an all-night party.’

  ‘If that’s the case, you might as well have accepted Dafydd’s invitation.’

  Before crashing into bed, and whilst Carl snored magnificently on, she’d given Diane an account of how, and where, she’d found Jordan. She’d kept this succinct, omitting the bit about the underpants, a detail which she found vaguely embarrassing and which added nothing significant to the story.

  ‘He’s pretty dishy, don’t you think?’ Diane said.

  Diane’s constant observations about men were juvenile and tacky; unattractive in a woman of her age – their age. They smacked of desperation. She already had a partner who worshipped her, not to mention a Romanian husband who might at any moment burst back on to the scene. Wasn’t that enough to be going on with?

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. He’s short. And he’s got a very thick Welsh accent.’ She folded her arms. ‘Have you told Carl about your husband yet?’

  ‘No. Not yet.’ Diane looked intently at her. ‘Have I done something to upset you, Lizzie? You must tell me if I have.’

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘Of course not. Sorry. I shouldn’t have snapped. I’m useless if I don’t get my eight hours.’

  ‘Why don’t you go back to bed?’

  ‘It’s okay. This’ll do the trick.’ She poured herself a second cup of coffee. ‘I’ll have a nap this afternoon if we’re not doing anything.’

  She took her coffee out into the garden where Carl was unzipping the tent.

  ‘It needs … refreshing.’ He flapped his arms, shooing air into the nylon tunnel. ‘I don’t know the correct word.’

  ‘Airing. We say airing. But refreshing is just as good. Better, in fact.’

  ‘You must tell me if you want me to put the tent away. I understand why you would wish that. But maybe,’ he hesitated, ‘maybe we should let Jordan decide. It would be good for him to take that responsibility. If we treat him like a child then he will behave like a child.’

  ‘You’re a very trusting person, Carl.’

  He shrugged and smiled. ‘I believe that we should give everyone the benefit of the doubt, don’t you?’

  As if on cue, the bedroom window swung open and Jordan looked down at them.

  ‘Güten Morgen,’ Carl called up. ‘Wie geht’s?’

  The boy looked dazed.

  ‘I was wondering whether you would like to come to my rehearsal today. The concerto we will be practising is quite interesting. Very modern.’ He looked at Elizabeth. ‘Would that be okay with you?’

  ‘Yes. Of course.’

  She would have put money on Jordan turning down the offer and was surprised when he replied, ‘Cool. I’ll grab some shots.’

  ‘Shots?’ Carl said.

  Jordan held up his phone.

  ‘He’s keeping a photographic record of his visit to Wales,’ Elizabeth explained.

  ‘No problem. We are a very handsome crowd.’ Carl waved his wristwatch in Jordan’s direction. ‘We will leave in twenty minutes. Enough time for you to shower. We have a canteen at the rehearsal studio. You can get breakfast there.’

  Jordan disappeared.

  ‘Are you sure about this?’ Elizabeth asked. ‘It’s very sweet of you. And, to be honest, it’s quite a relief. I was wondering how I was going to keep him occupied.’

  ‘No problem. If he gets bored, I will show him where he can catch a bus home.’ He hooked his arm around her shoulder and gave her a brotherly squeeze. ‘I want you and Diane to have some time together. Just the two of you. It’s good for her to have a true friend to talk to.’

  Knowing what she knew, Elizabeth felt like traitor.

  ‘I want you to see one of my favourite places,’ Diane said as soon as Carl and Jordan had gone. ‘It’s only a ten minute drive from here. We’ll be home in plenty of time if Jordan decides to come back early.’

  ‘Do I need anything?’

  ‘A camera, maybe. I’ll bring a bottle of water and some fruit.’

  They got in to Diane’s battered Renault and headed away from the city centre. Soon they joined a dual carriageway which Elizabeth calculated was taking them north. They travelled no more than a few miles before leaving it again and taking a minor road which climbed up a heavily wooded slope where a streamlet raced down the ditch next to the potholed road and the banks on either side were lush with cow parsley and marsh mallow. It was a green and peaceful place. They turned off the road through a gated entrance and, without warning, a petite castle lay ahead of them, its curving walls constructed from reddish stone; it was towered and turreted like something from a fairy tale. It even had a drawbridge.

  ‘Gosh,’ Elizabeth whispered.

  Diane pulled into the parking area amongst the beech trees. ‘Isn’t it amazing?’

  ‘What is it exactly?’

  ‘A sort of folly. A Victorian architect’s notion of a medieval castle. Castle Coch. Red Castle. It was built for the Marquis of Bute – another exploitative bastard. But I forgive him. It’s such a fabulous place. And wait until you see the inside.’

  They bought tickets at the kiosk then wandered through the castle from room to room, admiring the flamboyant and fantastic murals, the ornate mouldings, the exquisite gilding and jewel-like stained glass. Their early start paid off. They shared the magic castle with only a few diligent tourists. Jordan and Vexler and Dafydd Jones were banished, to be replaced by knights and squires, dragons and magic, as Elizabeth was transported, courtesy of a rich man’s fantasy, to the age of chivalry.

  An hour or so later, they sat at a picnic table, looking back towards the castle. There were only a couple of spaces left in the car park and visitors were streaming over the drawbridge.

  ‘I’m glad we got here before the hordes,’ Elizabeth said, accepting the nectarine that Diane offered. ‘I love it. It’s wonderful. And the setting is perfect. But I wouldn’t have guessed it was your sort of thing.’

  ‘It isn’t. I can’t stand anything fancy or fanciful. But, I don’t know, this goes way, way beyond that. The ultimate anything – even the ultimate whimsy – is guaranteed to impress, don’t you agree?’

  Having had time to digest Diane’s revelation, Elizabeth felt it was the moment to probe a little deeper. This seemed easier here, detached from the reality of her current life.

  ‘If Marin Vexler turned up on your doorstep tomorrow with a bouquet of red roses, what would you do? Truthfully. No bullshitting.’

  ‘Truthfully?’ Diane puffed out her cheeks then exhaled slowly. ‘Don’t think I haven’t played this out dozens of times. It’s an appalling thing to admit, but it would depend how well he’d aged. He’d be fifty-five, fifty-six now—’

  ‘A bit younger than Laurence.’

  ‘D’you know, I’ve never thought of it like that.’ She twisted and untwisted the cap of the water bottle that stood on the table between them. ‘He was very charismatic. Th
ose gypsy curls and blazing eyes…’

  ‘Johnny Depp-ish?’

  ‘You’ve got it. And if he turned up looking half as beautiful as he did then, I wouldn’t be able to resist.’ She drank from the bottle, bubbles of air glugging up through the water. ‘But if he’d lost his hair and his teeth – I have to say his teeth weren’t in great shape – and if he had a beer gut and was wearing horn-rimmed specs, it might be a different matter altogether. I’m not proud of it but that’s probably how it would be.’

  ‘And Carl? Truthfully.’

  She sighed. ‘Carl is a wonderful man. When it became obvious that he fancied, cared for, loved me, I began to wonder if I’d been getting it wrong all my life. Rejecting the nice guys in favour of the shits. Don’t they say that all women are searching for a father figure? God knows, my dad was never much of a father. Dee-daa-daaaa.’ She adopted a mournful expression and scraped an air violin. ‘You’d found Daddy Laurence twenty years ago and you still seemed pretty content. So when Carl turned up, out of the blue, the nicest nice guy, the fatherliest father-figure a woman could ask for, I thought…’ she shrugged.

  ‘I asked you what your feelings are for Carl, not for a load of cod psychology,’ Elizabeth said, gently.

  ‘Feelings?’ Diane dipped her head, massaging her forehead with her fingertips. ‘Affection. Respect. Gratitude. Admiration. He makes me feel confident, safe, good about myself. But…’

  She faltered and looked up, and Elizabeth nodded, encouraging her to take the final few steps.

  ‘I suppose I love him. But I’m not in love with him. How corny is that?’

  ‘What you’re saying is that, wonderful though he may be, you don’t fancy him.’

  Confirmation came in Diane’s silence.

  Elizabeth wasn’t surprised by Diane’s admission. The remarkable thing was that she’d persevered with Carl for – what – two years (although she couldn’t be sure that her friend hadn’t strayed in that time). Even though he hadn’t spelled it out, it was clear that Carl knew something was troubling Diane, and clear too that he was counting on her to get to the bottom of it. Carl was, bless him, so devoted to Di that should Vexler turn up to claim his wife, he would probably propose a ménage à trois rather than lose the woman he loved.

  As they drove home, the mood in the car was downbeat. Elizabeth did most of the talking and, in a bid to cheer Diane up, she told her about her financial arrangement with Jordan.

  ‘What?’ Diane laughed, ‘Fifteen quid a day? That’s outrageous.’

  ‘Yes. But he waived yesterday’s fee because I let him sleep in the tent. And he told the Jones girls that he’s called Jay – he did the same with that Layla girl, the one we gave the lift to. I reckon I should charge him for keeping stum on that one.’

  ‘You can’t blame him, can you? It’s not great being called Jordan. Would you want to be associated with an “enhanced” Z-list celeb?’ Diane put her head back and laughed. ‘Remember when we changed our names?’

  ‘I do, now you come to mention it.’

  ‘What was I? Nadia. That’s it. Almost an anagram of Diane.’

  ‘Almost. And I was Liza. We didn’t manage to keep it up for long. We kept forgetting. We were in the third form. Miss Leonard was form teacher. She smelled of TCP.’

  ‘And she had a moustache. Remember when we left the razor and shaving foam on her desk?’ Diane laid an index finger across her upper lip and adopted a tremulous voice. ‘“Whoever’s responsible for this, it’s not funny and it’s not clever.”’

  Elizabeth felt a twinge of remorse as she recalled the elderly history teacher failing to maintain order as she struggled towards pension day. ‘We persecuted that poor woman.’

  ‘She deserved it. She was unfit for purpose. Teachers are employed to turn kids on to education, not put them off for life.’

  Elizabeth glanced at her companion. ‘I’m sorry if I gave you the third degree back there. It’s only that, if I’m to help, I need to know how things stand.’

  ‘No worries.’

  They pulled up outside the house but Diane made no move to get out of the car. ‘Now can I ask you something?’

  ‘Oh, God.’

  ‘The doorbell rings. David Cassidy is standing on the doorstep, with a bunch of red roses. David as he was in 1972, of course.’

  ‘That’s a relief. I saw his picture in a magazine last time I was at the dentist’s. He looks like a cross between Joan Rivers and a tanned leather handbag.’

  ‘So what are you going to do?’

  ‘Ummm. Toss you for who goes first?’

  ‘That’s my girl.’

  13

  TUESDAY: 1.10PM

  When they got in, there was no sign of Jordan but Carl had texted that he appeared to be enjoying the rehearsal.

  ‘What are your plans for this afternoon?’ Elizabeth asked.

  ‘I thought I’d pop into college. Check my pigeonhole.’

  ‘You think Marin will contact you there?’

  ‘It’s where the money turned up. It seems the logical place. D’you want to come?’

  ‘I’ll stay here and have a nap, if that’s okay with you. I don’t think I slept at all last night.’

  ‘Good idea. I need to pick up a few things but I shouldn’t be gone for more than an hour.’

  They ate a sandwich lunch in the garden then Diane went off in the car and Elizabeth had the house to herself.

  It was easy to forget, when 150 miles of motorway separated them, how demanding Diane could be. Melodramatic, too. Laurence was never at ease when Di was around, as if he were dreading that she might announce she wasn’t wearing knickers, or come right out and challenge his privileged upbringing. Laurence was always courteous – Old Etonians didn’t know how not to be – but, within no time at all, he found a reason to absent himself. Last year, when Carl was away on an orchestral tour and Diane had come to stay with them, Laurence had spent most of the weekend in the attic, ‘rationalising the storage system’, only coming down for meals and when it was time to drive Diane to Paddington.

  She and Diane had been thrown together by the vagaries of the education system. If she had been six months younger, or if an official had drawn a different line on the map, they would never have met. And had they not been in the same form, and in the same ‘sets’ for English and Maths, they would never have become friends. Elizabeth loved having a ‘wild’ friend. Who didn’t want to be mates with the school renegade? Besides giving her kudos amongst her contemporaries it irritated her parents. They’d shared only five schoolgirl years but they had been the intense, miserable, wonderful years of puberty. After O levels, Diane had left and, inevitably, they saw less of each other. Their friendship might have petered out altogether had Paul Raines not died and Diane been in such trouble.

  Of course there had been other friends along the way. Carol Wills and she had been as thick as thieves from the moment they started primary school until the day the Wills family moved to Lancaster (or was it Leicester?). At college there was Fiona McFarlane. After they graduated, Fiona had gone off to do VSO in Malawi, whilst she’d married Laurence and become a mother. For a few years they’d made the effort to keep in contact but, by unspoken mutual consent, they’d lapsed into exchanging birthday cards and Christmas catch-up letters until finally those had stopped coming too.

  And there were dozens of other people whom she termed ‘friends’. Work colleagues, members of her reading group and her Pilates class, the Kaufmanns next door, Romina and James across the road, Leonie and Dag up in Camden. All of them were more than acquaintances – but were they truly friends?

  Spotting a Concise Oxford Dictionary on the bookshelf, she flicked through its flimsy pages

  Friend, n. One joined to another in intimacy & mutual benevolence independently of sexual or family love; person who acts for one, e.g. as second in duel.

  She smiled. Diane would definitely be up for a bit of duelling action. Interesting, too, that according to this definition
friendship excluded sexual love. (One in the eye for those who swore that their spouses were also their best friends.)

  Catching sight of herself in a mirror, she noted her pasty face and dark-ringed eyes. If – if – she were going next door for the much-talked-of drinks, she ought to catch up on her sleep. It was tempting to find a deckchair and doze in the garden. But she never slept properly unless she was lying on a bed so, yawning, she went upstairs.

  Jordan’s bedroom door was shut but, persuading herself that his window might need opening, she went in. The bed was unmade, pillows on the floor and, as she suspected, the room had a ‘fruity’ smell. Everything that had been inside his rucksack was now outside it, dispersed evenly across the floor. Order one day, chaos the next. Was he trying to wrong foot her? Was he following a handbook on guerrilla warfare? Keep the enemy guessing.

  Picking her way through the debris she went to the window and opened it as wide as it would go, immediately feeling a current of air drawing through the room.

  She looked across the gardens to Dafydd Jones’s house. Most of the windows were open. An array of garden furniture – deckchairs and those nasty lounger things – dotted the lawn. A tray of glasses stood on the flagstones near the back door. But there was no sign of anyone.

  When they’d returned to the house last night, she’d cross-questioned Jordan and he’d told her that the girls had made contact in the afternoon, whilst she’d been out for her walk. ‘We, like, chatted through the hedge.’ ‘You didn’t mention it.’ ‘Do I have to tell you, like, everything? Then, in the night, they invited me over. Seemed stupid, waking you up to tell you I was going next door.’