‘Oh well,’ Liz said reluctantly, ‘we got chatting in the car and then I asked him in and, well, you know, one thing led to another.’
‘You went to bed with him.’
‘Well, yes.’
‘And?’
‘Well, he wasn’t nearly as bad as you made out. Maybe it’s because he’s not in love with me. Maybe he’s been practising on someone else. Anyway. It was all right.’
All right. This from someone who had always implied that Gian-Carlo was in the Olympic gold medal class.
‘Anyway,’ Liz added, ‘sex isn’t everything. I’m lonely, Annie. I want someone of my own, and he’s kind, he won’t treat me badly.’
‘I hope you’ll be very happy.’
‘Don’t be like that.’
‘No, I mean it. I really do. I’m just … surprised.’
Silence. Expensive telephone minutes ticking away.
‘What about Gian-Carlo?’ Annie asked suddenly.
‘Well, I said I’d give him up, of course.’
‘Will you?’
‘How do I know till I do it?’
Annie was still in shock, as if they had finally proved that the earth was flat and shown her the evidence.
‘I’m being honest with you,’ Liz said. ‘You can wreck the whole thing if you want to.’
‘No, I can’t,’ Annie said. ‘And I don’t want to.’
‘Please forgive me,’ Liz said. ‘Jeremy’s going to ring you tomorrow. He’s gone home to tell his mother.’
Next day there was a large bunch of flowers from Jeremy with no message. But he didn’t phone.
August was hot, with sudden bursts of rain. She sat on the balcony or lay on the beach, trying to get brown for Daniel. Once or twice she even swam in the icy water. One night there was an electric storm and she stood at her living-room window watching it, while the cat cowered under the sofa and she tried to persuade her that storms were fun. Great jagged forks of lightning crackled across the sky beyond the sea. It was an awesome sight, quite different from a storm in town. She felt she had dropped out of London life and was now a part of some elemental world. Would Daniel enjoy seeing her in this new environment? There was so much she didn’t know about him.
She and Penny abandoned all pretence of working on Lydia Snake. Penny was knitting. Various tiny garments in white and yellow, blue and pink, sprang from her needles. She was keeping her options open. Annie sat and watched her while she talked about how happy she was. It felt odd, seeing Penny so transformed. As the bump grew larger, the Penny she knew seemed to disappear behind it. When Steve joined them he was so polite and considerate that Annie hardly recognised him. She almost wanted to ask him to tease her, so as not to arouse suspicion. She found herself wondering if she would have been like Penny, had she ever got pregnant by Peter.
Jeremy wrote an embarrassed letter from which she gathered that he and Liz had been seeing each other ever since Annie left town. It made more sense, it made the decision less sudden, but she wondered why Liz had not told her, when she was bound to find out. He implied he was marrying Liz because she reminded him of Annie. It didn’t sound very complimentary to Liz but perhaps he was trying to be tactful. Annie was shaken because she had never thought that she and Liz were alike at all, except in the most superficial way. She wondered what sort of a marriage it would be, if Jeremy saw Liz as a substitute, a sort of consolation prize, and Liz was still secretly involved with Gian-Carlo. She felt shocked: it was against all her romantic principles. But perhaps she was wrong and they would be all the happier for having low expectations. After all, she and Daniel had both pursued grand passions and ended up getting divorced. Perhaps if the flames never burnt very high, they would never burn out either. Liz and Jeremy might be able to simmer away together into contented old age. It didn’t sound very exciting, but it might be cosy.
As the day of Daniel’s visit approached, she caught herself wishing that it could be forever postponed, like jam tomorrow, so that she might have the pleasure of looking forward to it indefinitely. She hated to think that the time would actually come and therefore pass. And yet she was also impatient to the point of desperation. She smiled to herself, thinking that her students would hardly recognise this crazy, obsessive person. They only saw her as someone cool and confident, efficient in her work, friendly and distant.
Daniel arrived about seven. He looked very tired, having driven from Cornwall to Newcastle with two children, stayed the night, had a row with Deborah, and driven from Newcastle to Sussex. When he got home he would probably have a row with Judy, if they both had the energy. The two sets of children had all continued to loathe each other and had spent the entire holiday fighting. He had also paid brief visits to widowed parents and in-laws, and dug gardens, painted walls, laid carpets. He told her all this in a casual, throw-away style, as if it was a joke, and she hugged him, knowing better than to sympathise. He seldom hugged her first, but always responded when she hugged him. He seemed to need her to make the first move. Now when she put her arms round him he looked down at her, smiling fondly; he smelt the same as ever, and felt just as solid. It was like hugging a tree or a bear. Sometimes she thought that if he were not furry and heavily built with a special smell, none of this would have happened. She undid his shirt buttons and kissed his fur, breathing in the scent, which did not remind her of anything but him. In the dark or blindfolded, she would have recognised him.
‘You feel good,’ she told him inadequately. ‘And you smell wonderful.’
‘So do you.’
They kissed. It was extraordinary to see him in this new space, in the flat overlooking the sea, doing ordinary things he had never done before with her, like unpacking his overnight bag. She looked tenderly at the items as they appeared: toothbrush, electric razor, a clean shirt, a bottle of champagne. They had a drink and went to bed, making love quickly because it had been so long since they were together. She was so moved at having him inside her again that she cried. Our longest separation yet, she thought, but did not say so, in case it sounded like a reproach. Afterwards, the cat came to join them, purring and sniffing the sheets.
She had prepared a feast, but he said they could have it for lunch: he wanted to take her out for dinner. Crossing the road, he held her back from the traffic and she said lightly yet with an undercurrent of bitterness, thinking of all the time she had spent without him, ‘Oh, you could always replace me.’
‘I don’t think I could,’ he said. ‘You’re unique.’
He so seldom paid her compliments that she was silent with surprise and did not dare ask him to elaborate in case he took refuge in jokes and told her that surely everyone was unique.
Over dinner she told him about Jeremy and Liz, Penny and Steve, presenting each story as a joke. She felt he needed light relief. It occurred to her, not for the first time, that this was her role in his life: to provide amusement, warmth, acceptance, just as his role in her life was to be a focus for all her intense feelings. It was a strange bargain and it made her feel rather sad, but she did not want to spoil their time together with any negative emotion. And yet this was a unique opportunity: at last they had time to talk.
‘Why don’t we do this more often?’ she ventured to say, as she ate the delicious food. ‘Or is that a silly question?’
‘Because it would make waves,’ he said. ‘I lost my children that way. I can’t go through all that again. Two weekends a month and a summer holiday aren’t the same thing at all. I spend all my time trying to mend fences.’
‘So I’ve just got to put up with it,’ she said.
‘Only if you want to.’
‘Obviously I do.’
‘I don’t take you for granted, if that’s what you mean.’
Well, there it was, she thought. You could ask a man to leave his wife, perhaps, but you couldn’t ask him to leave his children. She agreed with him really. Two sets of abandoned children would be unbearable. She would never survive the guilt, and neither would he.
‘But we never make plans,’ she said. ‘And I find you very hard to talk to.’
‘I just live from day to day,’ he said, ‘and I’ve never found talking helps. We’re talking now, aren’t we? But it doesn’t change anything.’
‘I only feel all right when we’re touching,’ she said.
‘Then let’s touch some more.’
‘But you never say anything reassuring or encouraging or …’ She gave up and simply held his hand under the table.
‘What’s the point when I’ve got nothing to offer you?’ he said.
Outside the restaurant the sea sucked at the pebbles, drew itself back, then sprang at them again.
He paid the bill and they went back to the flat, looked at the moon, finished the champagne and went to bed. He warned her to kick him if he snored and she promised she would, but he didn’t snore, just breathed heavily on his back, and then, turning with a sudden movement on to his side, slept so silently that he might have been dead. She curled round him, breathing in the smell of his skin, and feeling, much against her will, sorry for him as well as sorry for herself. It was hopeless. His burdens hung around him like the panniers on a donkey, preventing anyone from getting really close to him. There simply wasn’t enough time or energy for all he had to do. She remembered how once she had watched him walking down the road to her flat and he had looked like a man with all the troubles of the world on his shoulders; yet the moment she opened the door he had been flippant and bright as usual. I’ve either got to accept this the way it is, she told herself, or get out: there are no other options.
She fought against sleep, wanting to extend the luxury of spending the night with him, just as she had wanted to postpone his arrival, but eventually sleep overcame her. She woke in the night several times, though, feeling him move restlessly beside her. She was so unused to sleeping with anyone that at first in her semi-conscious state she thought she was back in the days of her marriage and panic engulfed her until she remembered that it was Daniel.
In the morning it felt strange, seeing each other tousled and bleary for the first time. They made love differently; already it seemed more domestic. She found she was exhausted from all the excitement, the disturbed night, and slightly hungover from the champagne: it was almost as though she had jet lag. Her body was out of sync and her mind was buzzing.
They had breakfast on the balcony and the sea soothed her as it always did. They compared suntans in the harsh daylight. They watched the bright sails skimming across the water and occasionally plunging in.
‘What time d’you have to leave?’ she asked.
‘After lunch.’
They went back to bed and made love as if they might never meet again. As usual it felt so right that while it lasted she did not care that they hardly talked and seldom met. They were in another world where they could communicate through their skin.
Around noon she got up and served the feast she had prepared the previous day. It was raining by now so they had to eat indoors. The lovely food stuck in her throat and he had to eat most of it. All she felt now was time passing like an express train, wrenching them apart. It was almost a relief when he said he had to go; she could not bear much more waiting.
When he kissed her goodbye he held her face in his hands as if he really cared about her.
‘See you soon,’ he said, as he always did, although it was seldom true.
‘Take care,’ she said as usual.
After he had gone she curled up in their scented sheets and slept and slept.
She lived on her memories far into September, replaying their time together like an old film. She felt curiously content. It occurred to her that Daniel was a consolation prize as much as Jeremy had been, that each represented half a relationship, that neither could change, that both were fixed like the scene in the snowstorm paperweight. She was safe. Involved and yet detached. She could not be hurt again as she had been with Peter. Perhaps in her heart she preferred it that way. Perhaps she wasn’t ready yet to take such enormous risks again. The realisation calmed her. It was reassuring to decide that she wasn’t the masochistic idiot her friends seemed to think, but a sensible grown-up woman in charge of her life, taking care of herself as best she could.
Time passed and Daniel didn’t ring, but she was unworried. He had never been good at telephoning. She read books and prepared lectures and walked on the beach. The week before she was due to go home she rang the office and they said he was sick. That alarmed her. One of her worst fantasies had always been that he would die in an accident and no one would tell her because they did not know she existed.
The call came the same night and she knew at once something was wrong. He had never before rung her so late.
‘Hullo,’ he said, sounding remote and self-contained. ‘Sorry I haven’t been in touch.’
‘Are you all right? I phoned the office and they told me you were ill.’
He managed to laugh. ‘Well, I’m not at my best. Judy’s left me.’
She was too shocked to speak. It was the one thing she had never expected.
‘Just took the kids and left me a note.’
She said slowly, ‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Why are you surprised? I’m not. I told you three years ago she knew she’d made a mistake. She’s just been biding her time.’ But he sounded shell-shocked all the same.
Daniel alone. It was unthinkable. It changed everything. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘When are you coming back?’
‘Next week.’
‘Well, don’t be too surprised if you find me on your doorstep with a suitcase.’
She was silent, shocked to find that her strongest emotion was terror. Underneath the terror was a mixture of excitement and rage.
‘Don’t panic,’ he said, hearing her silence. ‘That was a joke.’
‘Maybe she’ll come back.’ It didn’t sound like a joke.
‘I rather doubt it,’ he said. ‘She’s got somebody else.’
‘I can’t believe it.’
‘Why not? I told you I’m a walking disaster. She’s only doing to me what I did to Deborah. It’s almost funny, isn’t it?’
‘Not really,’ she said gently.
‘I’ve never lived alone,’ he said. ‘It’ll be an education, won’t it?’
Penny actually laughed when Annie broke the news. ‘You know the old saying, “Be careful what you wish for, because you may get it.” ’
‘But I’d just decided I like it the way it is,’ Annie said, aghast. ‘It’s all I can handle.’
‘The great editor in the sky must be working to rule,’ Penny said. ‘For three years you’ve been telling her you want more of Daniel. Obviously your new message hasn’t reached her yet.’
‘But we hardly know each other,’ Annie said. ‘Except in bed.’
‘Well, now’s your chance. I think it’s wonderful.’
‘But … two broken marriages … four children to visit … what’s he going to be like? Where does that leave me?’
‘It’s make or break time,’ said Penny. ‘Real life has caught up with you.’
Annie drove back to the flat in a daze. In less than three months at the seaside, everything had changed: Liz and Jeremy, Penny and Steve, and now herself and Daniel. It could be the end of something or it could be the start of a whole new life. But it could never be the same again.
Jean was due back in the morning. Annie fed the cat and watered the plants for the last time, then stood on the balcony watching the sea.
It was time to go back to the city.
Signs of the Times
Autumn always seems melancholy to Jo, its falling leaves and dark afternoons and relentless slide towards Christmas, with Bonfire Night thrown in as a rather desperate attempt to cheer everyone up. It’s even worse near the end of a decade, she thinks, forcing her to review more than the past year. She says to Madelyn, ‘I’ve decided I don’t like the eight
ies.’
‘Never mind,’ says Madelyn, ‘they’re nearly over.’
The sisters are sitting over the remnants of lunch, finishing the last of the wine, having a forbidden cigarette.
‘That’s like saying a hurricane’s nearly over,’ says Jo. ‘What about the damage?’
She treasures these Saturdays alone with Madelyn, just the two of them. Because she has known Madelyn all her life, they could be any age when they are together. And because their lives are so different, together they make up a whole extra person, a phantom third, who just might be able to solve problems too much for either of them separately. She doesn’t even resent the fact, as she did in her teens, that Madelyn has cornered the market in beauty. They both have the family face, but on Madelyn it looks better. She has a certain bony elegance, while Jo has somehow managed to get both wrinkled and flabby. The same red hair on Jo looks gingery; on Madelyn it has the sheen of copper. Having children must be ageing, Jo decides.
‘Are you thinking of Martin?’ Madelyn asks.
‘I suppose.’
Madelyn puts her hand over Jo’s hand and squeezes it. ‘He’ll be all right.’
But it isn’t easy to have a brother who lives with someone who is HIV positive. They’ve always known he’s gay, well, almost as long as he’s known himself. Since their teens, anyway. Because it was Martin, it was easy to accept, like different tastes in music or clothes; it didn’t seem like something you read about in the newspapers, homosexuality, that big word, that could be a problem or a natural choice – however you preferred to see it. It was just Martin being himself. Until AIDS.
He told Madelyn first, about Simon having the virus. That still rankles a bit, but Jo tells herself it’s only to be expected, he and Madelyn have always been specially close, probably something to do with being near in age. Their little brother. Mum’s afterthought. Squeezed in and out just as the gates were closing.
‘He wants to have the test,’ Madelyn says.
Jo shivers. Until he has it, they can all pretend this isn’t really happening. ‘Did he ask you to tell me that?’
Triangles Page 17
