There was a difference, though — not my being older, or married, or knowing it was Milo rather than Ollie in there, but the fact that the downstairs windows were tall and un-curtained. If I turned sideways, I could see them, two heads together on the sofa, not together-together, kissing, but close enough to make an innocent observer assume they must be a couple — and close enough to make me peel myself from the picnic table and move in for a better view. From what I could make out, they were perched at opposite ends of the sofa, facing each other — too far apart to be holding hands, but with their legs up and (I guessed) their feet touching in the middle. Whatever it was they were discussing had made them animated, with Milo waving his arms about and Daisy shaking her head. I felt sick, as sick as Ollie, but to stand there and watch, knowing they couldn’t see me, was irresistible. It was only when Rufus appeared, jumping up to lick my face, that I withdrew into the darkness, afraid his movements would catch their attention. I took up residence on the table again. Next time I turned to peer in, the two figures had gone. To separate beds? Or to embrace in a quiet corner somewhere? Anything seemed possible.
A gust stirred in the blackness, polishing the stars. Despite the warmth of the night, the wood of the picnic table felt damp beneath my back and after a while I pulled myself up and sat cross-legged, staring out across the fields and imagining I could hear the roar of breakers beyond them. What had cured me all those years ago was Daisy telling me that she loved Ollie as she could never love anyone else. The inevitability of it was her story, and had gone on being her story, and I believed it, as I also believed, paradoxically, that she felt more comfortable with me than with him. I remember a night back at the house in my third year — them on the sofa, me in a chair. We were talking about the kind of lives we wanted after graduating: where we’d live, what kind of work we’d do, how many children we’d have, the usual hopes and dreams. Suddenly Daisy slid down from her seat and knelt at Ollie’s feet, or rather between his feet, laying her head on his left thigh and reaching towards his face with her right hand, which he took and held, before putting her fingers in his mouth one after the other. I’ve since wondered if they meant it as a taunt. But I’m sure they didn’t notice my hard-on. And at the time I took it as a spontaneous declaration of desire: she was in thrall to his body and so was he.
Now she was in thrall to Milo.
I felt disorientated, under the stars. Did it matter that Ollie was dying and his relationship with Daisy falling apart? We weren’t as close as we used to be. I only saw them every few years. And yet it did matter, not for nostalgic reasons but because the life I’d led, and the choices I’d made, rested on Ollie and Daisy staying together.
I was surprised by how angry I felt, not just with Milo and
Daisy, but with Ollie too. Why wasn’t he fighting the tumour? Why wasn’t he fighting Milo? He was too accepting, too resigned.
I was angry with him for another reason: that reference to my having a temper — as if he suspected me of being violent with Campbell Foster because I’d a record of violence in the past. The accusation was deeply unfair and concerned an episode from years before which Ollie had misunderstood.
It happened one Sunday, shortly after he and Daisy got together. The previous weekend — lonely, miserable, and with time to kill — I’d gone shopping in town and returned with a tea mug I liked both for its design (a big looping handle and an ace of diamonds motif) and its rich turquoise colour. That morning I couldn’t find it. I searched my bedroom and the kitchen, without success. It seemed plain the offender was Ollie, at that moment in bed with Daisy in her hall of residence. A furtive search of his room didn’t unearth the mug. But he had seen me with it. And there’d been a rare exchange between us earlier that week, when I might even have mentioned buying it. Had he broken it and chucked it in the bin? Hidden it to taunt me? Stolen it as a dare to amuse his rugby friends? Or to amuse Daisy, another of his thefts from me? As I sat there drinking coffee from one of the landlord’s ugly, chipped mugs I seethed with rage and thought about trashing Ollie’s room. At that very moment the smallest of the three Japanese students, Yukio, walked in. He was carrying two mugs, one of them mine. I didn’t wait for explanations, just snatched the mug and, leaving it on the worktop for safety, launched myself at him, yelling oaths he couldn’t understand. He fell backwards on the brick floor, banging his head. I continued to shout as he lay there concussed. Not for one moment did I think of kicking him. On the contrary, once I’d worked out my aggression, I bent down to help him to his feet. He misunderstood, though, cowering as I leaned over him. Just then the front door banged and Ollie walked in. Misreading the situation, he rushed to restrain me. I explained about the mug, omitting to mention that my surge of anger had been caused by him. Helped upright, Yukio said he’d found the mug in the living room (where I’d watched television the night before) and was intending to wash it up. I apologised and shook his hand, saying the mug had enormous sentimental value, which wasn’t altogether a lie. There were no repercussions — except that Yukio moved out not long afterwards and Ollie stored the episode away to use against me.
It’s true I occasionally lose my temper. But I don’t get into fights with men, and apart from obliging that slag in Prestatyn I’ve never been rough with women. For Ollie to bring up the Yukio incident, when I was facing charges of professional misconduct, was vicious and underhand.
But he’s ill, I muttered to myself. He’s lashing out against everyone and everything. The tumour is to blame, not him.
Below me, on the grass, Rufus began to whine: his master was acting strangely and he wanted to go in. I’d no idea of the time, or how long I’d been sitting there, but the air was chilly and the stars had lost their sheen. ‘Come on, then,’ I said, climbing down from the picnic table. As we moved towards the lit cube of the house, the only sound was the swoosh of grass wetting our feet, like an incoming tide.
‘Is that you, Milo?’ Daisy said, as I crept into the living room.
‘No, it’s me, Ian,’ I said.
She was lying curled on the sofa where she’d been sitting with Milo. Her back was towards me and her dress had ridden up, exposing her thighs. As I stared, she rolled over, pulled the dress down and sat up.
‘Sorry, I must have fallen asleep,’ she said, and perhaps she had. But there was a wine bottle on the floor and her eyes weren’t blotchy with tiredness but from crying.
‘People went to bed,’ she said, ‘and I sat here talking to Milo, then he went to bed, too. I’d forgotten you were still up.’
‘It’s just as well I am. You’d have been here till morning.’
‘It’s comfortable enough.’
‘You don’t look comfortable,’ I said. ‘You look unhappy.’
‘No, really, I’m …’
She wanted to deny it but the word ‘unhappy’ broke her defences and her chin trembled before she could say that she was fine. She turned her face away, and for a time I just stood there in the hope she’d cry herself out. But when the crying got louder, loud enough to wake people, I moved across to sit next to her — and as the cushions sagged with my weight, she turned towards me, arms theatrically held out and eyes tightly closed. I didn’t know where to put myself but Daisy’s arms locked around me, and my chest became a sponge for her tears. To stroke her and murmur ‘There, there’ seemed inadequate. But when she whispered ‘That feels good’ I stopped worrying and hugged her tighter.
We must have sat there like that — her head on my chest, my arms round her, both of us gently rocking — for ten minutes or more.
‘Could you bear to get me some tissues?’ she said, into my chest.
I grabbed a handful from the bathroom. While she sniffled into them, I lingered in the kitchen, pretending to hunt for a glass, so she’d have time to recompose herself.
‘Poor Ian,’ she said, accepting the water. ‘You drive all this way for a jolly weekend and what do you get?’
‘Never mind me,’ I said.
‘Your socks are all wet, look. How did that happen?’
She was right. My snooping in the grass had soaked them.
‘Take them off — you’ll catch a chill.’
‘OK,’ I said, reaching down, ‘but it’s you we should be worrying about. What’s the matter?’
‘I had too much wine at dinner. I always get tearful when I drink.’
‘But there must be a reason. Tearful about what?’
‘About Milo.’
Though the answer was no surprise, I couldn’t hide my dismay. ‘Oh.’
‘It’s finished. The marriage, our relationship, the lot. I’d no idea. I assumed everything was OK. Don’t look at me like that, Ian.’
I wasn’t conscious of looking like anything.
‘I thought he was your client.’
‘He is. Was. That’s all over with.’
‘He just ended things between you?’
‘Yes. He’s off to New York.’
‘I’m sure you’ll find someone else to take his place,’ I said, as unsarcastically as I could.
‘Of course. There are dozens of good art directors in London. But it’s upsetting. I’ll miss him terribly.’
‘So what does he do for you that Ollie can’t?’
‘Don’t be silly — Ollie isn’t an artist.’
‘Oh, so it’s because Milo’s an artist that you’ve been sleeping with him.’
‘Sleeping with him? Where did you get that idea?’
‘He just ended your relationship. You said so.’
‘Our business relationship. It’s he and Bianca who have broken up.’
‘What?’
‘She was only meant to be going home to the States for a month. But things have been difficult for some time apparently and now she’s announced she’s staying. She’s found a flat in Brooklyn, and a school for the girls. Milo says he’s going to find a job and move nearby, so they can share childcare.’
‘It makes sense. So why the tears?’
‘I know it’s silly. But he’s a good friend. Bianca too. It always upsets me when friends break up.’
I took her hand to hide my impatience. To cry over someone like Milo would have been indulgent at any time but it was especially so now, with Ollie terminally ill. But she didn’t know about the tumour, of course, and Ollie had sworn me not to tell.
‘Those poor little girls,’ she said.
‘Kids are resilient,’ I said, stroking her arm.
‘It’s sad all the same.’
If Daisy was so worried about kids being fucked up by their parents, she should look closer to home. But rather than say this, I kept stroking her arm.
‘Let me get you a drink,’ I said eventually.
‘I’ve drunk too much already.’
‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
I fetched two clean wine glasses from the kitchen.
‘Turn the lights off, will you?’ she said.
I sat at the opposite end on the sofa, with my back to the armrest, just like her. Our knees were bent and our feet were touching. The only light in the room was moonlight.
‘I can’t believe you thought I was sleeping with Milo,’ she said, more teasing than indignant.
‘He’s obviously attracted to you.’
‘Is he?’
‘Any man would be.’
‘Ah, now you’re being gallant.’
‘I mean it,’ I said. ‘You know that.’
‘Yes. You’re very loyal. To me as well as Em.’
I wasn’t used to her flirting with me. Nor to her slurring her words. But I would not have said she was drunk.
‘I’m pleased you and Em are happy together,’ she said.
‘We are.’ I wasn’t going to mention the children issue. Or money problems. Or my occasional visits to websites.
‘I used to worry about you,’ she said. ‘But things have turned out all right. Come and give me a hug.’
Or perhaps I was the one who suggested the hug. It doesn’t matter either way. We’d been friends for over twenty years, and the hug was simply to celebrate that. But because Daisy was lying against the armrest, finding a position to hug her from was tricky. She seemed ready to sit up to make it easier, but instead I gently slid her towards me, and shoved her bottom towards the sofa back, and lay down next to her, so that we were together on our sides, just as we used to be on her narrow student bed, with each of us looking over the other’s shoulder: a cheerful, tender, horizontal embrace. She was the one facing out and, firmly though I pressed into her, I felt in danger of falling backwards onto the floor, and for some reason — all that wine probably — I found this funny. My laughter wasn’t out-loud but she registered the tremor through my body.
‘What’s the joke?’ she said.
‘I’m about to fall off.’
‘We’d better sit up, then.’
‘No, if you just shift and …’
The only shifting possible was for her to slide outwards and down, and me clamber inwards and up, and though the manoeuvre wasn’t complex I found it awkward to effect, in part because I knew how we would end up, with me lying on top and her legs parted to accommodate me, a posture which would have shocked the other people in the house if they had seen us. Still, she didn’t seem especially embarrassed by my shuffling movements, and even managed to tilt her head forward and drink from the glass which, despite lying flat, she’d hung on to and kept from spilling — further evidence, to me, that she couldn’t be drunk.
‘Oh, I do love you,’ I said, speaking a truth but also parodying what people in our position traditionally say as a prelude to sex.
‘Dear Ian,’ she said, ‘you’re a good friend.’
Encouraged, I kissed her, chastely, on the brow, then no less chastely on each cheek, and nibbled her ears, which she refused to reciprocate, but she did grab my nose and waggle it, saying ‘Nice big nose', and at that point I thought she must be drunk, because her eyes were closed, with a dreamy expression across her face, but I did also wonder if in saying ‘Nice big nose’ she meant to acknowledge she could feel what was happening in my groin, and as I kissed her on the chin (the last safe place I could think of) I decided she must have meant it, or couldn’t not now be aware. Her eyes were still closed, happily, trustingly, almost as if she’d dropped off, and this gave me the courage to do the next thing, which was to kiss her lips, actually only one corner of her upper lip, but her eyes stayed shut so I kissed the opposite corner, and then each corner of the lower lip, at which point, feeling her stiffen, I thought about stopping — perhaps the friendly hugs had gone far enough. Except that she then seemed to relax again, so I kissed her some more, not lightly, either, and after that, or after my next kiss full on her lips, or the one after that, with my tongue in her mouth, or without a shadow of doubt after the kiss on her stomach when I’d pulled up her dress, there was no possibility of our stopping, not me anyway, not her either I’m sure, though she did say no, sharply, and push my chest as if to force me upward, but that no, and the subsequent noes, three or four of them, were reflex rather than genuine (belated attempts to prevent what she wanted to happen from happening) and I found them easy to stifle, and if her final noisy guilt-struck no, accompanied by a bite to my shoulder while her nails raked down my back, was certainly not lacking conviction, I sensed its purpose was to excite us both further, to add to our passion rather than offer resistance. I kept on going to the end, feeling her body quake beneath me in the aftermath, not because she was crying but because — I assumed — she too had come. The thought of Em, sleeping alone in all innocence upstairs, might normally — normally! — have taken the edge off my pleasure. But I felt triumphant, heroic, physically renewed, a shimmery gym-mirror version of myself, and, rather than recoiling, I gripped her tighter and kissed her some more, as if to resuscitate her. She had gone limp now, sad and rag-doll-like, defeated by her own desire. Once or twice she tried to push me off, not I think because she disliked the weight of me on her but from embarrassment. W
hen I couldn’t be budged she lay still again. At some point she reached for a tissue, and threaded it between her thighs, a gesture that made me kiss her on the cheek, the flow between us still strong as we lay there in the knowledge of what we had done, our hearts beating together and our legs intertwined, a position we’d not have altered for some time had we not heard footsteps on the gravel beyond the house, and immediately afterwards a key turning in the door along the corridor.
It’s strange what spurts into your head when you’re having sex. All the stranger in this case, since the memory, though an episode from university, did not involve Daisy.
One weekend during our second year, a friend of Ollie’s from boarding school — Toby I think he was called — came up to stay. They left me out of their various outings but I was fine with that: we all compartmentalise, and if one of my old school friends had come to visit me I would have done the same. Still, as it happened, I did run into Toby. On the Saturday night, the sound of voices in the kitchen drew me down from the bedroom, and there, next to Ollie, on a high stool, was a stocky, red-haired young man drinking coffee out of my turquoise mug. Though Ollie looked far from pleased to see me, Toby insisted I join them, which I did, helping myself to coffee in another mug, which was old and cracked, but carefully controlling my temper. (It’s typical of Ollie that, despite the earlier episode with Yukio, he’d simply not noticed Toby using my mug.) I’d been expecting some wealthy curled darling but was pleasantly surprised by Toby’s geniality; he seemed almost relieved to see me, as if a weekend spent with Ollie was proving a strain. I must have stayed talking for an hour, and would have stayed longer but for an awkwardness that arose when we discussed their boarding school. I forget what led up to it, but having confirmed that Toby had been a prefect — or ‘monitor’ as they called them — I made some joke about the likes of him and me not being ‘head boy material', with a meaningful nod at Ollie. Toby looked bemused for a second then flushed brick-red. Ollie quickly changed the subject. I made my excuses soon afterwards, aware I’d made some gaffe or spoken out of turn. Ollie didn’t allude to the episode afterwards, except to comment that Toby was a good bloke, but like all gingers (a word he pronounced with two hard ‘g’s) quick-tempered and jealous. I inferred that Toby had been desperate to become head boy himself — and that my remark had annoyed him by rubbing it in. Perhaps he even thought that Ollie had been sneering at him behind his back, and that my comment was a pre-planned joke at his expense. You can never underestimate people’s paranoia. I began to see why Ollie valued his friendship with me.
The Last Weekend Page 15
