Later, as I came to know Ollie better, I saw the episode could be interpreted differently. What if Toby had flushed red from embarrassment at seeing his friend caught out? That’s to say, what if Ollie had lied to me about being head boy? Parts of his past didn’t quite hang together. Hearing him boast of his military adventures to Daisy, who rather than mock (just as we had mocked the gap-year vets) hung on his every word, I sometimes wondered if his time at Sandhurst had been quite so colourful, supposing he’d been there at all. His claim to have bought the very MG his father had once owned seemed a story in the same mould — more wishful thinking than reality.
Perhaps that’s why the memory of Toby came back to me in Badingley. And Daisy wasn’t quite as peripheral to the story as I implied. In fact, the reason Ollie was entertaining Toby that weekend was that Daisy had gone home to see her parents in Leeds. And the reason she’d gone home was to placate them, after a terrible scene a couple of weekends before. As Daisy tells it, Mr and Mrs Brabant turned up unannounced at her hall of residence at ten o’clock on a Sunday morning. Normally at that time Mrs Brabant would have been in church, confessing her sins, but Daisy’s were the sins preoccupying her that day, specifically the sin of premarital sex. She and Ollie weren’t caught in the act, but when he emerged from where he was hiding in the bathroom Daisy couldn’t deny that he’d spent the night there. Her mother called her a lewd minx who’d be damned in Hell. Her father called Ollie a rutting goat who’d ruined his daughter. According to Daisy, what shut them up was Ollie saying how deeply he loved her and that he hoped to marry her if she’d only consent. According to Ollie, what did it was his public-school accent: a lordly sentence or two and the Brabants were tugging their forelocks. Within the hour, they scurried back to Leeds, where Daisy went to visit them two weeks later, to show that, whatever her sins, she was still a dutiful daughter.
She was of course mystified as to what had brought them in the first place. Intuition was my suggestion. But Ollie thought an anonymous letter or phone call more likely, and Daisy wondered whether someone had it in for them both, perhaps the next-door neighbour in her hall of residence who sometimes banged on the wall during their lovemaking. Whatever the reality, the stunt backfired. Rather than being driven apart, Ollie and Daisy drew closer, and have remained together — utterly loyal to each other — ever since.
Utterly loyal as far as I know. (You never do know, do you?)
Loyal until Badingley, when Daisy gave her body to me and these memories came surging back.
Snapped on, the chandelier hit us like a spotlight.
‘Archie! What are you doing?’
‘I could ask you the same question, Mum.’
‘I’m sitting here with Ian, as you can see.’
‘Hi, Ian.’
I would have preferred an ‘Uncle Ian', but perhaps he was getting too old for that.
‘Hi, Archie.’
‘It’s three in the morning, Mum. You never stay up this late.’
‘I didn’t feel sleepy.’
‘Yeah, right.’
‘What else would I be doing?’
‘It’s obvious what you’ve been doing. Drinking. There’s an empty bottle on the floor and a whole load more on the table.’
Next to the bottle lay the tissue, which had fallen when Daisy adjusted her dress. But Archie didn’t notice it and would have attached no significance to it even if he had.
‘Give me a hug,’ Daisy said, standing up and throwing her arms round him. ‘I’ve been worried about you.’
She hung there with her hands round his neck, eyes closed, legs shaky, face against his chest. He put his right arm round her shoulders but kept his left hand in the pocket of his jeans, unsure what to do with it and embarrassed by the role reversal — a child forced to parent his parent. I too was embarrassed. Daisy seemed all over the place. Carry on like this and she’d give us away.
‘What’s up, Mum? You’re being really weird.’
‘You went off in such a rush,’ she said, finally detaching herself and smoothing down her dress. ‘All I knew was you were at a sleepover.’
‘I’ve not been to a sleepover since I was nine.’
‘You know what I mean — going to a pop festival and staying overnight.’
‘Yeah, well, the gig was awesome but the campsite was crap. No room in anyone’s tent and too cold to sleep outside. Some guys there were driving this way, so I got a lift to the top of the road.’
‘You made some new friends, then?’
‘Ooh, goody, some new little friends for Archie,’ he sneered. Now her arms were no longer round him, normal hostilities could be resumed. ‘Christ, Mum. Yeah, I met some people and chilled with them, and I’m probably going back tomorrow. Anyway, I’m off to bed.’
As he trooped upstairs, he made sure to clump on each wooden step. I began to see what Ollie and Daisy had to put up with.
‘That was close,’ I said, reaching for Daisy. ‘You don’t think he saw us?’
She lifted her hands to keep me at bay.
‘It was dark in here,’ she said. ‘Probably not.’
‘It’s lucky you asked me to turn the light off.’
She wasn’t listening so I didn’t mention the rest of the luck. That he hadn’t come in by the French windows. That we’d had time to straighten our clothes. That he’d failed to recognise the smell of sweat and sex.
‘I’m going to bed,’ she said.
‘Me too,’ I said. ‘Pity it’s not the same one.’
The semen-soaked tissue was still lying on the floor. I picked it up and dropped it in the waste-paper basket on my way to the kitchen.
Daisy was standing by the sink.
‘Bad head,’ she said, running the tap. ‘I drank way too much.’
‘You seem fine,’ I said, not ready for excuses.
‘This house is so weird,’ she said. More denial: in a weird house, she was implying, people did weird things.
I grabbed her arm as she walked past, desperate to hold her again. She whirled round, as if I’d burned her.
‘Don’t you dare.’
Her anger would have upset me if I’d known her less well. But I shrugged and let her go. To come to terms with what we’d done would take time — till tomorrow morning at least.
Archie was right about the evidence of our debauchery. On the dining table, there were five empty bottles (one champagne, two reds and two whites), as well as two more in the living room. I found a cardboard box in the cupboard under the stairs and filled it as quietly as I could, adding an empty gin bottle (Ollie and I had been drinking G & Ts before supper) to fill the last space. I would have sworn I was sober but when I unlatched the door to the utility room, with the intention of depositing the box, I stumbled down the single step and pitched forwards onto the hairy blanket where Rufus had his bed. He had gone there on returning from our midnight excursion but it was pure chance I’d shut the door. Had he wandered through, might the spell have been broken and Daisy and I, embarrassed, drawn back from making love? Who knows. But finding myself on the hairy rug I hugged him in gratitude and, suddenly weary, lay down beside him, with a mixture of guilt and euphoria. The guilt was twofold: I’d betrayed both my wife and my best friend. But the euphoria was stronger: I’d finally fucked the first woman I loved.
Sunday
In the dream, Milo and I were digging holes while Daisy watched — whoever finished first would marry her. Milo’s hole went down six feet and he was standing shoulder-deep in it, about to win, when his ribs flew apart like broken laths and the heart inside them became a brain — then a tumour. As the tumour wriggled on the ground, I heaped rocks on it. ‘Ian,’ it cried, turning into Ollie’s face, ‘Ian …’
The knock on the door was a gentle knock, as if intended for only one of us, and it came with a whispered ‘Ian'. I slid from the sheets, appalled to be awake. After two hours on the rug with Rufus, I’d only just gone to bed.
‘Ian!’ I heard again.
�
�Coming!’ I whispered back, trying not to wake Em.
I was coming but taking my time about it since the voice outside the door was Ollie’s — the real Ollie, not the Ollie in my dream. My first thought was that Daisy had confessed to him. And though I realised before I turned the handle that a cuckolded husband, out for revenge, would be hammering and screaming at the door, not whispering through it, my hand on the knob was shaking, and not only from the alcohol of the night before.
‘There you are,’ Ollie whispered, though I was barely there at all.
He was wearing black nylon leggings and a black nylon top, as if slicked in oil. I felt like the slithery one but it was he who looked the part.
‘Come on,’ he hissed, ‘it’s time.’
‘What?’
‘It’s time for the race.’
‘Which race?’
‘The bike race. We talked about it last night, remember.’
I didn’t.
‘Let’s get cracking before the others are up.’
Hung-over and half naked, I didn’t have the energy to argue. I didn’t have the energy to race, either, but that was beside the point. Even sober and dressed, I would have found it hard to resist Ollie, his hands tensing in readiness, the nerves twitching in his cheek. I grabbed a T-shirt, shorts and trainers as softly as I could, desperate that Em should sleep on. Despite my nausea, relief flooded through me. Ollie didn’t know about last night. Nor — full of life as he was — did he appear to be dying.
How I dressed and got downstairs I’ve no idea. My body must have done it for me.
The double wooden doors to the garage were wide open, with two bikes propped against them. Crouched beside the spokes, Ollie was angrily pumping tyres.
The bikes were lean, with handlebars like rams’ horns.
‘Where did these come from?’ I said.
‘I rented them. There’s a shop in the village.’
‘They look pretty old.’
‘They are old. They stopped making bikes like these in the 1970s. Take the red one. You’ll need to raise the saddle. Daisy used it last.’
My bike at home is a mountain bike: thick frame, broad saddle, high handles, fat tyres. This bike had drop handlebars coiled in black tape, and the frame and wheels looked so thin I feared they’d buckle under me. Worst of all was the saddle, short in length, narrow in width, and viciously tapered at the front: even Daisy, with her little bum, must have struggled to perch on it, but at least she didn’t have testicles to worry about. I wondered which would be worse, the injuries I’d get from staying in the saddle or those I’d suffer from falling off.
Though Daisy’s legs are much shorter than mine, I raised the saddle only half an inch. I would ride with my bum in the air, as jockeys do.
‘Helmet?’ Ollie said, proffering a yellow plastic vented dome.
‘Do we have to?’ I said. A helmet would be horrendous in the heat.
‘Up to you, mate.’
‘Are you wearing yours?’
A matching yellow helmet sat high on his head. But he hadn’t yet fastened the strap.
‘Not if you’re not,’ he said.
It didn’t seem reckless to do without.
We rode in parallel down the drive, Ollie to the left of the grass seam, me — wobbling — to the right. Reaching down to grip the drop handlebars felt precarious, so I rode with my hands on top of the fork.
At the end of the drive, we turned right into the lane. The blue sky had gone brown towards the horizon, as though scorched by the heat of the earth.
‘We’ll stick together to the coast,’ Ollie said, ‘so you get to know the route. Then turn round and race back. It’s only twenty miles. It won’t kill us.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ I said.
Of course it occurred to me that Ollie’s energy level was abnormal — that the brain tumour could be making him manic.
I even worried about the effects a vigorous bike ride might have: under stress, mightn’t a tumour swell and burst? But there was no resisting his enthusiasm.
As we rode, he rattled on about bikes. Raleigh now imported them from Taiwan, he said. And did I know that tubular tyres, like wine, improve with age? Oh, and by the way, when Reg Harris came out of retirement to become British sprint champion at the age of fifty-four, he was riding a Raleigh just like ours. Some of the talk was too technical for me: the relative virtues of derailleur gears and Sturmey-Archers, of cutaway lugs, light alloy forks and ring-brazed frames. He said he’d learned it not from cycling magazines but from his father, who when they came on holiday here had rented bikes from the same shop.
Ollie aside, the day was silent, just the whirr of spokes. The narrow lane ran through high arching hedgerows with wheat (not yet harvested) massing behind them and the two of us between, thus:
-(..)-
In his funereal nylon, Ollie set a gentle pace at first, cruising the three miles to the next village before forking left at a duck pond. After that, as we entered a pine forest, he pushed on. The day was too hot already and the shade between the firs brought no relief. My breath was heavier than Ollie’s, my T-shirt wetter. I hung back, saving myself for the return. Not that I cared as much as he did about winning. But I didn’t want to lose by a mile.
‘This is the easy bit,’ he said, slowing down so I could catch up. ‘There are two big hills before the coast.’
‘Oh good,’ I said.
He looked at me in mock suspicion.
‘You weren’t up to any naughty business last night?’
‘What?’ ‘Marital nooky — it dilutes the testosterone. You seem a bit sluggish. Real athletes never have sex before a race.’
‘It’s not a race, Ollie. It’s a Sunday fun run.’
‘Fun, yes. But also Round Two of the bet.’
It wasn’t that I had forgotten but I needed to hear him confirm it.
‘With five thousand quid riding on it.’
‘Unless you want to double that. Feeling lucky?’
Did I say that or did he? I can’t remember now. My palms were sticky and my head hurt from the night before.
I’d got lucky with Daisy. Or had I? Nothing felt real.
‘Tempted?’
‘No.’
‘Where’s your steel, man? Don’t be a pussy.’
Silence hung heavy in the pines. The only breeze was our own momentum.
‘OK, we’ll double it.’
‘Done.’
It was weak of me to get into it — but also logical. I was one—nil up already. And though I wouldn’t call myself fit, I do ride to school every day, and had stepped up my mileage in the holidays, not (as Em alleged) to prepare for the contest but for the pleasure. Ollie, meanwhile, was ill.
For the next few miles the route was flat and I didn’t touch my gears. But as we left the forest and reached the first hill — a short but steep ascent near a pig farm — I changed down. Whether too jerkily or in the wrong direction I don’t know, but something jammed and clunked and the chain came off.
Ollie was off his bike and seeing to mine almost before I’d dismounted. The chain had caught between the sprocket and the frame. I thought he would need a lever to free it but a minute of writhing and it came clear. He fed the chain back on the teeth then held the rear wheel in the air and ran through the gears.
Behind him pigs were nosing through dry mud. The hedge swarmed with brambles and late-summer flies.
‘I meant to warn you that the gears are sensitive,’ he said, handing the bike back, his fingers as oil-black as his clothes. ‘You should be fine now.’
I didn’t doubt he’d taken the better bike but I trusted him to put mine in order.
‘I’ll wheel it to the top,’ I said. We weren’t yet racing, after all.
He pushed off, calling back over his shoulder: ‘Daisy did the same thing. She hasn’t a clue about gears, either. You’re a right pair.’
I took it slowly up the hill, unable to suppress the memory, silently climbing to the summit w
ith her, sweating, panting, soaked to the skin. I had always loved her. And last night she had loved me back.
Ollie was hovering on the ridge like a vulture.
‘Suffering?’ he said.
‘A little.’
‘You stayed up talking, then?’
‘Yes.’
I remounted, ready to roll. Though the pig farm lay behind us, the smell lingered in my nostrils.
Once we were back, I’d catch her in private, to discuss the next step.
‘How was Daisy?’ he said.
‘Sorry?’
‘How did she seem?’
‘Why ask me? She’s your wife.’
‘Doesn’t mean I understand her. Do you understand Em?’
Did I? Not an unkind bone in her body, people said of her.
But bones are neither kind nor unkind. Bones are just bones. And Em was just Em, affectionate when I deserved affection but angry when I didn’t, which seemed to be increasingly the case.
‘Daisy’s been distracted lately,’ he said. ‘I don’t know why.’
It couldn’t be the tumour, if he’d not told her. Was it Milo then? But she had assured me they were just friends.
The Last Weekend Page 16
