Annie laughed and laughed, and realised she wanted to cry.
‘Gian-Carlo would never behave like that,’ Liz added. ‘He’d be too busy at home slurping up the pasta or designing another memorable tile.’
‘Liz,’ Annie said seriously, ‘does Gian-Carlo say he loves you?’
‘All the time.’
‘Daniel never says it.’
‘Don’t worry,’ said Liz. ‘They don’t mean it, so it really doesn’t matter if they say it or not. The result’s the same. Here we are and here they aren’t.’
‘But I want to say it to Daniel.’
‘God, you’re a glutton for punishment,’ said Liz fondly.
When they were touching, she always felt all right. Whether they were making love or holding hands, skin contact and body warmth reassured her that all was well. Sometimes in bed he held her so tight she felt she might suffocate or drown, engulfed in sweat and pleasure and fur. Then it was like a bear hug. She couldn’t equate this person with the other in a grey pin-striped suit who kissed her goodbye on her forehead and made harsh jokes that kept her at arm’s length. She felt she was allowed to get close to him only in bed.
Sometimes he let slip tantalising details of his past life, like the time Judy was about to have their first child and one of his other children was seriously ill in hospital up in Newcastle. He had spent most of his time zooming up and down the motorway.
‘That must have been awful,’ she said. ‘You must have felt really torn in two.’
‘Just as well I had a fast car,’ he said.
She sensed that he dreaded pity more than anything and would always defend himself against it with flippancy.
‘You don’t like me to sympathise, do you?’ she said, greatly daring.
He looked amazed. ‘Why should you sympathise when all my troubles are of my own making?’
She wanted to discuss his two marriages, to find out why he had left Deborah for Judy, and what had gone wrong there too.
‘I’m just not a monogamous person,’ he said, ‘as you must have noticed by now.’ And he smiled to take the sting out of the words.
‘But what were they like?’ she persisted. ‘What are they like? Are they very different?’
‘I’m not sure I know the answer to that,’ he said. ‘They’re probably quite alike, I think I tend to go on making the same mistakes.’
‘So do I,’ she said bitterly.
‘Well, I can’t discuss you with them,’ he said, ‘so it hardly seems fair to discuss them with you.’
When she finally told him about the seaside plan, he looked surprised for a moment, then said quickly, ‘How nice, you’ll enjoy that.’
She took a deep breath. ‘Will you be able to come down?’
‘I’ll try.’
‘That sounds like no.’
He smiled again. ‘Don’t be so pessimistic.’
She wondered if he had noticed that for the first time it would be her leaving him, instead of the other way round, no longer waiting by the phone to be slotted into his life. If he wanted to see her this summer he would have to make the effort, travel, tell lies.
‘Come on,’ he said, glancing at his watch. ‘Let’s go to bed.’
So now she sat with Penny on her new balcony, wearing dark glasses against the sparkling of the sun on the water, gazing at the shimmering sails of the boats and the windsurfers. Already London seemed remote. She felt she had stepped back into the past: the little seaside town was small and quiet, even when, as now, it was full of visitors. Life was conducted at a different pace here. People smiled at you in streets and cafés; shopkeepers let you exchange things without a receipt. You could sit outside eating fish and chips or a cream tea; you could watch children making sandcastles or playing with seaweed on the beach and dream of your own childhood. The shops were full of cheap sundresses and comfortable sandals; old ladies wandered about together window-shopping, or sat in deckchairs on the promenade wearing white cardigans and sensible shoes. It was the sort of place she might once have hated but now she found it restful and calm. She liked collecting seashells and coloured stones; she enjoyed the muddy sand between her toes and the crunch of the shingle underneath her feet; she revelled in pottering about the antique shops which contained not just furniture and mirrors but amazing collections of bric-à-brac. One day she found a snowstorm paperweight and it reminded her of the relationship with Daniel: no matter how much you shook it up, afterwards it was exactly the same.
Officially she and Penny were meant to be working on Lydia Snake, but so far instead of getting on with the story they had begun, they had amused themselves making a list of titles for other future stories. It was more fun. Lydia Snake at the Seaside. Lydia Snake joins the Circus. Lydia Snake at Boarding School. And – an X certificate version for parents only – Lydia Snake in Soho.
‘There’s a lot of mileage in this,’ Annie said. ‘It could go on for ever.’
‘That is if it ever gets started.’
‘Ah, you’ve just hit the hidden snag.’
Penny was more obviously pregnant now. It made Annie feel protective, just seeing her like that, with the unaccustomed curve that she herself had been unable to achieve. She had begun to warm to Steve, too, as she saw him more considerate of Penny in her touchingly vulnerable state. He would leap up now to fetch and carry for her in a way he had never done before. Perhaps she had been wrong about him and he was really a nice person after all. She spent a lot of time with them both, having lunches and drinks and dinners. Sometimes they invited single men specially to meet her but she thought of Daniel and failed to find them attractive. Steve took a keen interest in Lydia Snake and enjoyed coming up with ever more suggestive titles: Lydia Snake’s Skin Flick, or Lydia Snake Gets It Off.
One night he drove her home because her car was being serviced. She was feeling totally relaxed with him by now, so the shock was even greater when he put his hand on her knee as he parked outside her flat. ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in?’ he said, like the worst caricature of a leering escort.
‘No,’ she said inadequately, feeling that to ask him to remove his hand from her knee would turn her too into a caricature, only of offended virtue. Perhaps she could freeze it off by sheer willpower, make him feel so embarrassed that he would remove it of his own accord.
To her horror he took this passivity for encouragement, leaned across and tried to kiss her. Instantly they were locked in a dreadful old-fashioned battle, Annie feeling like an indignant teenager again as she fought not to unclench her teeth. The hand was still on her knee and the other hand seemed to possess a life of its own, darting about into all sorts of places uninvited. Annie stopped pretending to be grown up and tactful: she simply hit him and he reeled backwards with surprise, banging his head on the windscreen. He swore and Annie laughed. She had been right all along about A Streetcar Named Desire.
‘I’m sorry,’ Steve muttered, holding his head in both hands as if to make sure it had not come loose. ‘I must have had too much to drink.’
Annie found this a particularly insulting excuse. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said sharply. ‘I wouldn’t have let you drive me home if you had.’
‘No, that’s true. Sorry,’ he said again. ‘I’ve always fancied you, okay?’
‘That’s better,’ Annie said. Simple lust was preferable to alcoholic frenzy any day, she thought. ‘Just don’t do it again, that’s all, it’s very embarrassing. And how can you be sure I won’t tell Penny? It would serve you right if I did.’
‘I assume you wouldn’t want to hurt her,’ he said simply. ‘Any more than I would.’
‘Then for God’s sake think before you jump on someone again. Penny’s friends may not all be as understanding as I am. I’m sorry if you’re getting frustrated while she’s pregnant, but it won’t last for ever.’
She thought she was trying to make allowances for him, to smooth it over, since she would have to go on seeing them both, but he said, sounding surprised,
‘Oh, it’s not that, she’s as randy as ever, bless her heart, it’s me, it turns me right off her being like that, I can’t think of her that way, know what I mean?’
Something Daniel had said came back to her then, something about children changing everything; and she had replied that not having them changed everything too.
‘Yes, I think so,’ she said, getting out of the car, ‘and I’m going to pretend this never happened.’
‘I thought you’d understand,’ Steve said through the window. ‘You knowing about married men and all that.’
When she got up to the flat she stood for a long time on the balcony, watching the moon making a sharp silver path on the water. She wanted Daniel desperately: to be here, to hug her, to listen, to make love. The worst part was, she did find Steve attractive, not as himself but as a Warren Beatty lookalike. If she had not been in love with Daniel … If Penny had not been her friend … Yes, she could imagine circumstances in which she might have gone to bed with Steve.
She tried to think about it honestly, without prejudice. Perhaps if you didn’t take a sternly moralistic view, there was something inherently difficult about watching your girlfriend turn into a wife and then into a mother, when the mother you knew best was your own. In another culture there would have been other wives and concubines lined up to share the strain. Perhaps fifty years of monogamy was too much to expect of anyone.
This is ridiculous, she thought. Here I am actually making excuses for my best friend’s nasty husband because he’s greedy and self-indulgent and wants a bit on the side. He thinks I’m cheap, fair game, an easy lay because I have a married lover. It’s as simple as that.
But it didn’t feel simple at all and she was making excuses for herself and Daniel as well as Steve. I can’t have it both ways, she told herself. I’ve been the deceived wife and now I’m the other woman. Who gets the better deal? Do you want quantity or quality? In another culture I might have been actually grateful to fertile Linda Jones for giving my husband a child when I couldn’t. I might have seen it as a blessing, letting me off the hook. And if I’m honest I must admit I enjoyed those affairs I had, particularly as I could blame Peter for provoking them.
She remembered that Judy had been Daniel’s mistress before she was his wife and wondered which role she preferred. She must know him well. There must be some level, even subconscious, on which she knew that someone else was playing her old part. It would probably always be so. Was that really such an enviable situation?
Oh well, I can’t solve it all tonight, she thought, as her mother used to say, only about different subjects, as she poured the cocoa. It was amazing that a casual pass from Steve had conjured up so much introspection. Except that everything made her think of Daniel because he was usually in her mind. She spent so little time actually with him that she had to make up the difference by thinking and talking about him.
She took a quick swig of whisky instead of cocoa and went to bed, soothed by the sound of the waves. But it was a long time before she slept.
In the morning she was busy getting ready for Liz and Jeremy. Usually she saw them separately, so that Jeremy could flirt with her and Liz could talk about Gian-Carlo, but as she hated cooking and they both wanted to see the flat, it seemed sensible to invite them together for once. Besides, she owed Jeremy a good meal for letting her place in London to some rich Americans. Liz had immediately said she’d save petrol and ask for a lift.
While she was waiting for them to arrive, the phone rang and it was Daniel, calling from the golf club. A weekend call was a rare treat and she was overcome by joy.
‘D’you want the bad news or the good news?’ he asked.
‘Both.’
‘The bad news is I can’t get down to see you this month. I just can’t take that much time off. The good news is I could manage a stopover in August when I’ve taken the children back to Newcastle.’
August. The holiday month. The family month. The desert. Suddenly there was an oasis with palm trees, sparkling fountains, sherbet. She felt an absurdly wide smile spreading across her face.
‘Stopover,’ she said. ‘That means when people actually stay the night. Get into bed and sleep. Have breakfast and conversation. That kind of thing.’
‘That’s right.’ He was smiling too; she could hear it in his voice.
‘Could you confirm that in writing?’ she said.
The prospect of such delight suffused the day, giving it a warm pink glow, lending new meaning to the words rose-tinted glasses. She found it hard to concentrate on Jeremy and Liz, who finally arrived a bit later than expected, but when she did manage to notice them she thought they seemed a trifle edgy. Perhaps they had found the two-hour journey a strain. Alone with her, Liz had always said Jeremy was nice but dull, and Jeremy had implied that Liz was amusing but rather tarty, so maybe it proved how wise she had been to keep them more or less apart all this time. And yet they looked good together, both tall and thin. Liz was looking particularly well, wearing a cream dress Annie had not seen before, her skin lightly tanned, her hair newly streaked. How lucky Gian-Carlo was, Annie thought.
‘Daniel’s coming to stay the night in August,’ she announced in triumph.
‘Big deal,’ Liz said. ‘It’s only taken him three years.’
‘It’s different for you,’ Annie said. ‘When Gian-Carlo comes to London he can always stay the night because his wife is back in Milan. You take it for granted. You’re spoilt.’
‘I don’t know about spoilt,’ Liz said. ‘He’s beginning to snore and get a paunch. I think Maria’s cooking is finally catching up with him.’
‘Isn’t Daniel coming down this month as well?’ Jeremy asked.
‘He can’t,’ Annie said defensively. ‘Two wives and four children take a lot of supporting, you know. Driving down here and back would mean taking a whole day off work. It’s hard enough for him when I’m in London, just taking a few hours off.’
‘He doesn’t deserve you,’ said Jeremy.
It was annoying having to defend Daniel when privately she agreed with what they said about him. But it was more annoying to have them criticise him. She was entitled to complain, but they were not supposed to attack, even though she knew they only did it out of concern for her. Nevertheless they had a nice lunch and a stroll on the beach until it came on to rain and they ended up back in the flat reading the Sunday papers and playing Scrabble. The cat seemed greatly taken with them both and kept sitting on them and purring and kneading them with her claws.
‘You should get another cat, Annie,’ Liz said.
‘I know,’ Annie said. ‘Maybe I will But it’s such a cliché, the spinster teacher with her cat.’ In her heart she longed for a cat and did not know how she had lived without all that comforting warm fur since Cindy died. ‘Anyway, I’m out a lot,’ she added, wishing it were true.
When they had gone she rang up Penny to gloat about Daniel, her joyfulness having completely wiped out the memory of Steve’s clumsy grope, until he answered the phone. Hearing his voice filled with sudden apprehension brought it all back, and she nearly laughed because he sounded so obviously terrified she was going to report him to Penny. Instead she told Penny about Daniel’s impending visit and heard Penny doing her best to sound delighted and not succeeding very well.
‘Well, I think it’s wonderful,’ Annie said sharply.
‘Yes, of course it is. I’m really pleased for you, you know I am. It’s just – oh, I just wish you could find someone who could really be with you. I’d like you to be as happy as I am.’
There was no answer to that. She didn’t feel like ringing anyone else with her news: obviously no one could appreciate it as she did. So she spent the evening vaguely watching television, feeling almost dizzy at the prospect of a night with Daniel. She wondered if she would be able to sleep at all. At times like this, or when she was waiting for him to arrive, her happiness was so overpowering that it made all the deprivation in between seem like nothing. It was a pri
vilege to be allowed to feel so intensely.
She fell asleep in front of the television and was woken at midnight by the phone. It was Liz.
‘Annie, I’ve got to ask you something,’ she said, sounding nervous. ‘I can’t sleep till I do but I don’t think you’re going to like it. Would you – well, would you mind very much if I married Jeremy?’
Annie, half awake, felt as though she had been kicked in the stomach. ‘Jeremy?’ she echoed feebly. ‘You and Jeremy? But you’ve always said he’s a wimp.’
There was a long sigh from Liz. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘but he is awfully nice.’
‘D’you think I hadn’t noticed?’ Annie was suddenly furious. ‘Why d’you think I’ve been going out with him all this time? Has he asked you then? When did all this happen?’ A whole plot seemed to be emerging from behind her back.
‘Well, I’ve always liked him,’ Liz said. ‘You know I have. I mean, we’ve liked each other. And you don’t want him, do you? You’ve had five years to make up your mind and you’ve always said no.’
Annie took deep breaths, trying to calm herself. ‘Is that what he says?’
‘No, but it’s true, isn’t it?’
‘But you don’t love him.’ She was still making an effort to understand. ‘Do you?’
Liz sighed again. ‘We get on well. And we’d both like to have children before it’s too late. I want to get married, Annie, I can’t help it. It’s all right for you, you’re divorced, but I’ve never been married and I don’t want to sit around here till Gian-Carlo trades me in for a newer model.’
‘Well, you don’t need my permission.’ She was amazed at the anger she felt. No more candle-lit dinners, no more proposals, no more moral support, no more sad eyes gazing at her with hopeless longing. No more Jeremy.
‘It needn’t make any difference to you,’ Liz said as if telepathic. ‘You’ve always said he was like a brother. Well, now he really will be.’
‘Why tonight?’ Annie demanded. ‘What happened tonight? He’s known you for five years too. Why should he suddenly ask you to marry him?’
Triangles Page 16
