I stopped to pick up a chunk of driftwood.
‘Has Daisy known Milo long?’ I said, handing it to Ollie.
‘A couple of years maybe. Why?’
‘No reason. I’d have guessed longer.’
‘She’s done a lot for his career.’
‘That figures.’
‘Sorry?’
‘I’m just surprised she invited him up here when you’re on holiday.’
‘You know Daisy,’ he said, tossing the driftwood in the sea, ‘she loves company.’
‘And he loves hers, that’s obvious,’ I said.
‘Is it?’
‘He admires her. I wasn’t implying there’s anything more.’
I picked up a flat stone and weighed it in my hand, then walked to the edge of the tide and skimmed it: o-o-o-o-o it went, before disappearing.
Ollie followed suit, as I knew he would: o-o-o-o-o-o-o his went, beating mine by two skips.
We skimmed stones out into the blue-brown sea, while dark clouds heaped up on the horizon. Ollie’s record was eleven bounces.
‘You don’t mean Milo’s — you know?’ he said, stepping deeper in the current.
‘What?’
‘He seems too involved in his kids to be leching after Daisy. And too married. Doesn’t he? What do you think?’
‘What do I think?’
‘Stop parroting me, Ian. I asked you a question.’
‘Hang on, I’m up to my knees here,’ I said. We waded back through the breakers. ‘You can’t expect me to tell you every thought I have.’
‘It’s a simple question.’
‘I should have kept my mouth shut. There’s no need to be jealous.’
‘What’s jealousy got to do with it?’
‘Nothing. That’s my point. Those clouds are getting darker, you know.’
I said it to distract him but it was true. They were building from the horizon and shaded with diagonal streaks of black. Another of the I-Spy books I’d had as a child was on clouds and I could still remember some of the terms — cirrostratus and castellatus and cumulonimbus. For a time I’d been a collector of clouds: clouds rippled like sand when the tide has gone out; clouds tagging along after a storm, like slow runners late to the finish line; clouds like dust covers in an empty room; clouds like galleons, battleships, barrage balloons, pillowcases, mares’ tails, dandelion clocks, shoals of mackerel; clouds like milk spills, snowdrifts, ink stains, snot streams; clouds the colour of school blackboards; clouds that turn cloudier as they approach, like a glass of anise with water added; clouds stacking up like planes over Heathrow. I pointed out the gathering storm. But Ollie gave it barely a glance. Once set on something, he wasn’t distractable.
‘They have been spending a lot of time together,’ he said.
‘That’s her job. Or was her job. It won’t be much longer.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Didn’t she tell you? I assumed she would have.’
‘Tell me what?’
‘Milo’s moving to New York. His marriage has broken up.’
‘She might have mentioned it,’ he said, though I knew from his look that she hadn’t. Despite all the lies he’d told, I felt a surge of pity for him.
‘He’s a single man again. You can tell. He has that look. The look of a man who’s —’
An Arctic tern swooped low above us, cutting me off.
‘What, on the prowl?’ Ollie said.
‘Lonely, that’s all I meant. Anyway, when he goes to New York, Daisy will soon be over him.’
‘Over him?’
‘I’m not saying there’s anything dodgy going on, just that she finds it hard to be detached.’
‘You think she’s too fond of him?’
‘I expect she has to be fond of him to represent him properly. She’s also fond of his wife — his ex, I mean. Sorry, I don’t know why I brought it up. You’ve nothing to worry about.’
I hadn’t intended to set Ollie on the rack — not till my suspicions had more substance. But sometimes things spill out before you know it.
As we walked on I babbled away, to take his mind off Milo and Daisy. Had he booked tennis for tomorrow morning? Would we be playing just the one set or best of three? The cliffs were lower by now and darkly textured, more clay-and-shale than shingle-and-sand. Out at sea it was raining. A large black cloud stretched down to the waves, like God unclenching His hand to let the water through.
We strode on to where the others were waiting.
‘I haven’t upset you?’ I said, before they could hear.
‘Not a jot, not a jot.’
‘Just forget everything I said, OK.’
‘OK,’ he said, though I knew he wouldn’t forget a word.
As well as the time in London when I didn’t see Daisy, there was another occasion, shortly afterwards, when I did. I’d been sent on a two-day training course near Paddington and the first day was so dull I bunked off for the second. I called Daisy from the B & B shortly after nine. It was a Friday and Archie was at nursery. I’ll come to the house, I said, but Daisy suggested a cafe in Hampstead, a couple of Tube stops away from her home. I arrived early, chose a coffee I’d never heard of, and waited in the window, under the A and F of CAFE, so I could see her coming down the street. I told myself that if she was late — as she proved to be, by twenty-two minutes — it wasn’t indifference but the opposite. The same with her reluctance to see me at the house: what she feared was her desire for me — with no one around to restrain us, anything might happen. I’d never understood what had gone wrong between us. Fruits and slots had helped distract me but I still thought about her constantly. Before I committed to Em, I needed to lay Daisy to rest.
I was perfectly positioned for her arrival but she was almost through the door before I recognised her.
‘You’ve cut your hair,’ I said, more accusing than I meant. She was wearing black trousers, a jacket buttoned up to her neck and hair cut tight against her scalp.
‘Do you like it?’
‘It’s different.’
‘You prefer it long.’
‘I’ll get used to it,’ I said.
I offered her coffee but she said she couldn’t stay long and that a glass of water would be fine. She chattered on, tense, high-pitched, like a dentist’s drill. Ollie was spending more and more time on the provincial trial circuit. They were having a new kitchen put in. Her closest colleague at the recruitment agency was leaving to have a baby. It was Daisy talking, and me listening, and though I wished she’d relax and undo her coat and say ‘bath’ and ‘grass', or ‘love’ and ‘chuck', as she used to do, I was happy just to be with her again. Only the hair distressed me. Dis-tress, I thought, as her words flowed over me. To have one’s tresses cut off. And to be unhappy. Either or both.
She talked on, running the clock down. I didn’t have long.
‘So are you happy?’ I said.
She laughed, taken aback.
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘That’s not an answer.’
‘Don’t I sound happy?’
That wasn’t an answer, either, but I let it pass.
‘I’m amazed you cope, living down south.’
‘I love it in London.’
‘With a small child to look after.’
‘He’s a delight.’
‘And Ollie away such a lot.’
‘I’m glad of it. I’d hate having him under my feet.’
Her tone was jokey. But humour can be a defence.
‘It must get lonely.’
‘I’ve lots of friends,’ she said, looking at her watch. However unhappy, she couldn’t admit it.
‘I just wanted to say,’ I said, knowing I’d not have another chance, ‘that if things are going badly, if you need someone to turn to, if you feel you’ve made a mistake, if … well, I don’t have to tell you.’
‘And I don’t have to tell you,’ she said, reclaiming her catchphrase.
It could have meant many thin
gs. But from her lips, I understood at once: It’s you who are my truest companion, Ian, but rightly or wrongly I’m with Ollie, and you mustn’t waste your life waiting for me. It must have cost her a lot to let me go, but that was when she did, in Hampstead, over a sugar bowl, between the letters A and F. The new hairstyle (was it Ollie who had forced her?) made it easier for me. Shorn, she could have been anyone.
I wasn’t surprised by what she said next.
‘And you?’
‘I’m OK.’
‘Are you seeing someone?’
I told her I was, and had been for a while, but omitted to say that we were living together, for fear she wasn’t ready for that. My instincts were right. I’d heard the rumble of jealousy in her question. And when I began to describe Em she cut me off, as if the thought of me being attracted to another woman was too painful.
‘That’s nice for you,’ she said. ‘God, is that the time?’
‘I’ll walk you home.’
‘I’m getting the Tube.’
‘To the station then.’
‘Don’t be daft. Stay and finish your coffee.’
She kissed me on the cheek, her coat buttoned to her neck, her handbag tight under her arm. I watched her go, stiff, short-haired, the antithesis of the Daisy I’d known. She could have had me once, in her prime. She could still have had me that day. But whether through cowardice or martyrdom, she missed the boat.
There’s a games arcade near King’s Cross and I played some slots while waiting for the train. When a drugged-up hooker came in and propositioned me, I ignored her, hoping she’d go away. But she kept bugging me and wrecking the game, even after I’d told her Go fuck yourself, and in the end I had to smack her round the chops. It wasn’t a hard smack, more a slap to bring her to her senses. But my hand caught her off balance, and her heels were so high she teetered and fell. If I’d really smacked her there would have been blood but I saw none as she lay clutching her face. She was probably well known to the police and they would have thanked me. But when her groans turned into screams, I decided it wasn’t worth the risk. I stepped over her and away, down the aisle of flashing machines. No one tried to stop me as I went.
Next day I proposed to Em.
A few months later, the four of us met up for the first time. And soon afterwards, Em and I were married. I’d had it in mind to ask Ollie to be best man but in the event he and Daisy couldn’t come: the wedding clashed with a holiday they’d booked, cancelling which would have cost them thousands.
So they claimed, though I have always suspected that Daisy couldn’t face the ceremony — not just because she was against marriage in general but because she was against my marriage in particular, having expected I’d always be there for her, the trusty sidekick and reserve.
As a guilt offering, they bought us a dining table and four chairs, delivered by furniture van the day before the wedding: it must have cost them as much as cancelling the holiday would have done, so I’m embarrassed to admit we barely use it, preferring to eat on stools in the kitchen or in front of the telly. We’re just not dinner-party sorts — all that blahing about kids and schools, subjects we prefer to avoid. Still, whenever we do use the dining table I think of Daisy, and that day in the cafe, and the sacrifice she made to set me free.
I thought it was over between us. It was over between us. Until Badingley.
We had lived in a glare since Friday. Now clouds were gathering and it was England again, gloom-struck and drab. Daisy and Ollie fussed round the terrace, stacking the chairs, rushing the cushions inside, folding the large white parasol’s wings. Milo told his girls to build an ark for their furry animals, before the heavens swept them away. The sky looked ready to crack. A few stray drops fell fat on the terrace. We were held in limbo, sultry and tense.
I sat in a deckchair with my eyes closed, imagining a shower of black ink, its rods and blobs erasing every trace of light. The end of the world, in an ink storm: it felt peaceful, imagining that.
‘Tea?’ Daisy said.
None of us wanted tea, or squash, or beer, only rain on our tongues.
Was it raining on Archie at his gig? To judge by the sky’s charred diagonals, it was raining on every village around. But it didn’t rain on us.
Em had gone to lie down in the bedroom — she always gets a headache before a storm. My head, too, was tightening, as if sliced horizontally by cheese wire or squeezed by a circle of coil.
Get that in your thick skull, will you?
The girls, bored with playing Noah, demanded a game. Milo suggested Snap, and Daisy fetched some playing cards out to the terrace, since it still refused to rain. Milo asked if I would like to join in. For poker maybe, but I shook my head and wandered inside. No sign of Ollie: he was probably pushing his car into the garage or putting up its soft top.
The air was black, an angry scrawl overwriting the earth.
Upstairs, Em lay dozing under a thin sheet. Beside her lay a book, with a swooning woman in a long red dress against a backdrop of snow-capped mountains. Me, I don’t read fiction any more: I had my fill of it at university. An actual person genuinely climbing a real mountain is more my thing these days, with accompanying facts and statistics. Tales of victory against the odds. Explorers, long-distance cyclists, yachtsmen, fell runners, potholers, adventurers in remote jungles: that’s what I go for, late at night, when I’ve tired of websites. I’m not a driven person but I’m fascinated by men who are. Men like Ollie, that is.
‘How are you, love?’ I said, perching nurse-like on the side of the bed.
‘So-so,’ Em said, pulling me down beside her.
I stroked her forehead and kneaded her neck, careful in my ministrations. Close though I felt to her, the thought of sex alarmed me: both the disloyalty to last night’s passion and the fear of being found out.
‘What time is it?’ she said. ‘Sixish.’
‘We could be home by eleven if we left now.’
‘We’ve been through this.’
‘I was watching you earlier, on the beach. You had a face like a funeral.’
‘I’m fine,’ I said.
‘You looked worried — like something bad was about to happen.’
The bad thing was Daisy, and had happened already. I kissed Em’s cheek in atonement. She kissed me on the lips in return.
‘I’m glad you came up,’ she said. ‘I wanted to tell you. Daisy knows.’
‘Knows what?’
‘We talked. It all came out. She knows about the tumour.’
‘When was this?’ I said.
‘Earlier. On the beach.’
Had she spoken to Daisy on the beach? I thought the figures arm in arm in the mist were Daisy and Milo.
‘Christ. I told you not to tell her.’
‘I didn’t. She knew already.’
I sat down on the bed.
‘Ollie told me she didn’t know,’ I said.
‘Daisy can’t understand that. Are you sure you heard him right?’
I replayed Ollie’s remark on the fairway, the bit about being given his cards. Then the conversation in the pub garden: the crisps, the wasps, ‘My Generation’ pounding — and the terrible prognosis.
‘I swear that’s what he said,’ I said.
‘Anyway, the point is she does know and it’s not as bad as Ollie says.’
‘Of course it’s bad. It’s terminal.’ ‘According to the consultant, the tumour’s low-grade and slow-growing. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s benign. They’re doing more tests next week.’
‘Ollie told me he was dying. Why would he lie?’
‘He’s in a panic. Anyone would be.’
‘Stop sticking up for him,’ I said. I stared at the window-pane, and the mummified fly in the spider’s web. ‘The lying fucker.’
‘I thought you’d be pleased.’
‘Of course I’m pleased. It’s just … If he’s not dying, why is Daisy marrying him?’
‘What’s that got to do with anything
?’ she said, feeling my brow as if I was the sick one.
‘It must be a precaution. In case it is terminal. To keep things simple with the will and so on. And because she feels sorry for him.’
‘You’re being so weird about this,’ Em said. ‘It’s like you want him to die.’
‘Don’t be stupid.’
‘You’re supposed to be his friend. He’s frightened. He needs your support.’
It was true. I ought to be kind to him. But he had lied.
‘I’m all sweaty,’ I said, pulling my T-shirt off.
‘That’s how I like you. Climb into bed.’
‘There’s no lock on the door.’
‘So?’
‘Milo’s kids are running around.’
‘I thought you wanted to make love. What else did you come up for?’
‘To see how you were. And change for dinner.’
‘It’s only a barbecue.’
‘Even so.’
I pulled away. She shrugged, giving up on me.
‘Put that nice green shirt on,’ she said. ‘No, not in the suitcase. The one hanging up.’
In my struggle to open the mirrored door, one of Em’s dresses fell on the shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe.
‘Not yours I take it?’ I said, picking up a shrivelled black brogue.
‘Yes, I saw those,’ Em laughed. ‘They’ll be Mr Quarles’s. His stuff is everywhere. I don’t think he’s touched anything since the accident. No wonder the place feels spooky.’
‘You’re not really spooked, are you?’ I said, putting the shoe back and grabbing my shirt. ‘We could leave, if you are.’
‘I’d feel better if you got in bed and gave me a cuddle.’
Relenting, I slid in beside her. A cuddle was all I intended, but Em had other ideas. Her skin felt hot and the familiar scent had the familiar effect. She was my wife, for God’s sake. Why feel guilty towards Daisy? Especially when the bitch was being so cold.
We were quiet in case the girls came up.
There can’t have been much of me, after last night, but I came.
She smiled as I buttoned my shirt. That’s when I knew she must be ovulating.
‘I’d better go down,’ I said. ‘Ollie will be looking for me.’
The Last Weekend Page 19
