The Next Best Thing

by Sarah Long

  And she was off.

  The house seemed cold and pretentious when Jane let herself in. That concrete staircase was a big mistake, she should never have allowed Will to talk her into it. She climbed up its minimalist treads, past the galleria and into the bathroom where the green glass washbasin mocked her, perched like a mixing bowl on its limestone base. Who did she think she was, living in this monument to cutting-edge urban design?

  She slipped into bed and thought about Steven May, so confident about his life. Whereas it seemed that the older she got, the less certain she became about things, a kind of reversal of wisdom. If she was honest, there were only two things she felt sure about right now. First of all, she loved her daughter to death. And secondly, she was looking forward to her Friday cinema trip with a sense of anticipation that was way beyond the reasonable. And which had entirely to do with the prospect of bumping into her new friend in the foyer of the French Institute.

  FIVE

  On a filthy December night, the best place to be was holed up at home with a ready meal and a bottle of wine. This was Rupert’s thought as he made his way through the rain down the Kings Road, towards his favourite source of comfort food. He’d had a horrible day at work and stepping into Marks and Spencer was like coming home to mother. Not his own chilly, spiky mother, but the mother he would have liked to have had. Quiet racks of ordinary clothes, blouses and trousers of the type worn by normal women, giving way to pretty underwear, cosmetics and flowers before you arrived at the shelves of easy-to-cat food. No effort required, microwave packs, heaven forbid that you should have to cut the ends off your own green beans. The only burden lay in deciding between Italian and Thai, gravad lax or sushi.

  Rupert opted for beef casserole with dumplings, a smoked-salmon starter and treacle sponge, plus a lump of blue Stilton and a bottle of claret. It was the kind of meal he used to dream of when he lived in New York. There, you could get any food you fancied delivered to your door, but then you still had to be on your toes with the cash and the tip and the obligatory pally exchanges with the delivery boy. It was nothing like the anonymous experience of shuffling round M&S with a wire basket, hovering over the Chinese Meal for Two as you projected the TV evening ahead. Britain was without doubt the cosiest country in the world.

  Rupert’s quiet night in was going to be spent alone, and he was looking forward to it. Lydia usually slept at her own place on Thursdays, which meant Rupert could do exactly as he pleased. He needed to take advantage of this luxury while he could. Very soon he would be entering the compromise and shared decisions of marriage, and in some respects he wasn’t at all sure he was ready for it.

  He wandered out of the food section and into men’s underwear where he selected a three-pack of black socks which he placed in his basket on top of his dinner. Some men stopped buying their own clothes once they were married. Their wives picked out their pants and advised them on which suits to buy. He knew Lydia was already chomping at the bit to give his wardrobe a thorough overhaul.

  The girl at the till filled a carrier bag with his meal and socks and took his bank card. ‘Would you like any cash back?’ she trilled.

  ‘Yes, fifty pounds please.’

  It amused him, this little ritual that took playing at shop to ridiculous lengths. Mr Brown went to town and he bought: beef and dumplings, sticky treacle pudding, three pairs of socks and fifty pounds. The first time someone had asked him if he wanted cash back, he thought he had won some kind of lottery, as though Britain had become a benevolent spoon-feeder during his years abroad, dishing out bonuses to random supermarket customers.

  Back at the flat, Rupert went to the bedroom to take off his shoes and put on his favourite pair of slippers. Lydia couldn’t stand them, she especially hated the nylon fur all flattened and brown around the edges, and the green and red plaid. She said they reminded her of Rupert the Bear, whereas she much preferred Rupert the hereditary peer. He saw she was right. It was what he had wanted when he proposed, for Lydia to bring up his standards and make him a more acceptable person. But he still enjoyed the chance to slob out when given a chance.

  He hung up his jacket in the wardrobe and pulled on his old sweater, dressing the part for a night in with himself. In the kitchen, he poured himself a glass of wine and went through the post. It was a relief to open the envelopes in his own time, without Lydia chivvying him along, and he was particularly pleased to find the Beales list had arrived. He added it to the pile of favourite nursery catalogues he kept beside the phone then took them all through to the sitting room to make his final choice. He was planning to order some roses for his garden in France and even the names soothed him: damask roses, Bourbons, the thornless Zephirine Drouhin, Felicite and Perpetue, Roseraie de I’Hay, Perla de Montserrat, Mme. Isaac Pereire. It was like inviting a bevy of ghostly ladies to beautify your life, to come and lay their gracious white arms around your troubled soul. He couldn’t show any interest in Lydia’s refurbishment of the flat, but the plans for his garden were on a different level altogether. They spoke of passion and release, conjuring up a paradise of perfume and soft velvet petals and sunshine.

  If he was a rose breeder, he could make one up called Jane. It would have apricot buds opening up into creamy buff petals. How many times had he run through their conversation in his head. Jane had said she dreamed of escape, and he imagined them leaving together, driving down to Dover in a Citroen 2CV, with nothing but a boot full of Austin roses and just the clothes they stood up in. They would catch the ferry and drive slowly through France, avoiding the autoroutes, taking the minor roads, stopping for lunch to eat tripe à la mode tie Caen or horse casserole at roadside cafés with plastic tablecloths and lace curtains. When they arrived at his house in Provence, they would plant the roses and then . . . And then his imagination ran out. He didn’t know this woman, he had no idea who she was, and no idea why he was placing her at the centre of his fantasy. But he did know he would be seeing her tomorrow, and that fact was exciting enough to make him almost lose his appetite.

  Almost, but not quite. He filled out the order form for Beales nurseries and returned to the kitchen to prepare his supper. Setting out the smoked salmon on a plate with a garnish of rocket, programming the microwave to heat the beef casserole. He took pleasure in his solitude: like a condemned man, he had the exquisite sense that each meal taken alone could he his last. The chair opposite him was blissfully, silently empty. Tomorrow it would be occupied by Lydia, noisily updating him on the plans for their party, pulling out a few more brochures of wedding venues. He should be glad at that thought, but he wasn’t.

  Rupert knew he didn’t want to turn into a sad old bloke living alone, but the fact was he enjoyed his own company. There was a quiet satisfaction in finding your own space after a gruelling day at the office. Padding from room to room in your old slippers without being upbraided for being an old slouch. Freed of the obligation to make small talk. But then again, it was time he got married, otherwise people would start to think he was a bit of a pervert. If you got past forty without being married, everyone assumed there was something wrong with you. If you were a woman, it was because you were a hard-nosed bitch concentrating on your career, but if you were a man it was because you were unnaturally close to your mother, or commitment-phobic, or gay, or all three.

  Maybe it was the power of thought, for as he was contemplating the need for marriage, the phone rang and it was Lydia.

  ‘Darling, I just had a thought, we must get our jabs done for the holiday. Can you meet at the hospital tomorrow lunchtime? You’re supposed to have it done three weeks before you go, otherwise you’ll be done for by a tsetse fly the moment you arrive.’

  Tomorrow lunchtime? Had she no idea how entirely impossible that was? It was on the tip of Rupert’s tongue to explain why, to tell her that tomorrow lunchtime was to be the high point of his week, when he realised how out of order it would be. He was building his entire week around the chance of meeting a woman he barely knew, and he w
as about to share that with his fiancee.

  ‘Not tomorrow, Lyd,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a work lunch.’

  It was the first time he’d ever lied to her, and it made him feel bad.

  Lydia hung up on Rupert and sank back into the foaming water of her scroll-topped cast-iron bath. The bathroom was the best thing about her Balham flat. It was so Eighties retro, she had laughed aloud when the estate agent had opened the door to show it to her. All fake Victoriana, gnarly gold taps, ruched blinds and dangling lavatory chain, with the bath tub floating like a stately galleon in the middle of the room. It took up nearly half the flat and was the only part of it she would be sorry to leave behind.

  She slipped her hips forward and let her head fall backwards, running her hands through her wet hair to rinse out the seaweed conditioner. The movement caused the water to slop over the edge of the bath, drenching the carpet, but Lydia didn’t care. If her landlord had been stupid enough to cover the bathroom floor with a wool carpet, he only had himself to blame if it disintegrated.

  A pile of holiday brochures was lined up beside the phone on a bow-legged velvet stool that stood next to the bath tub. They were all for spa holidays, though Lydia didn’t use that word any more. Last year it was OK to talk about going to a spa; this year you had to say you were going on a retreat. Not that the brochures had caught up with this yet, they weren’t nearly as ahead of the game as Lydia was. She wiped the water from her eyes and picked up her current favourite, which claimed that regular spa visits were essential if you were to achieve balance of mind and body. It implied that if you didn’t spend two grand on a trip to a luxury health farm in the Indian Ocean, you would fail to achieve this balance, and therefore presumably end up in a mental hospital.

  Personally, Lydia didn’t buy into all that nonsense about our lives being so stressful. Stress was when you didn’t know where your next meal was coming from. Stress was worrying about not having the money to pay the rent. It sure as hell didn’t equate with overpaid people tossing up between a yogic Thai massage and a honey-and-sesame wrap. Where did it come from, this idea that we were all so hard-done-by that we deserved narcissistic self-pampering? But still, in her business, she owed it to herself to look her best. She was planning to spend a week on a retreat before the wedding, to make sure she looked truly fabulous. It wasn’t so much a de-stressing exercise as an act of self-congratulation. A little ‘well done me’ present, to celebrate her success in pinning down lovely Rupert and his even lovelier — for she was nothing if not honest! — big fat fortune.

  The choice had been narrowed down to two. She was torn between the Banyan Tree in the Maldives where you were pummelled in your own private tropical garden surrounded by high walls, and Ananda in India where they went in for those Ayurvedic treatments inspired by the Hindu monkey god. Lydia loved all the eastern religions, especially Buddhism and Kabhaluh Judaism. So much sexier than drab old Christianity, though perhaps that would become the next big thing: hair shirts and scrimping and saving and not coveting your neighbour’s wife and those appalling fish stickers all over the family saloon.

  She flicked from the Jacuzzi Ocean Villas of the Banyan Tree to the majestic turrets of Ananda. When she read that the Moorish palace was still home to a living maharajah, her mind was made up. Even if the treatments were a load of quackery, everyone knew you couldn’t visit India without getting dysentery and losing half a stone, so any which way she would be the winner. She pulled the plug and stood up in the bath, like Botticelli’s Venus in a giant shell, her auburn hair slapping wetly over her shoulder. The water pooled sluggishly round her calves. She should really clear the drains, but then again it was hardly worth it, she’d be moving out soon.

  She stepped out of the bath and wrapped a towel round her body, picking up her hairbrush and standing before the full-length oval mirror. Free-standing and tilting awkwardly on its axis, it took up too much space, and made Lydia impatient for the sleek wet room she would be installing in Rupert’s apartment, which would be far more suitable for her home spa treatments. She frowned as she brushed her hair and thought about one detail she had overlooked. Where were she and Rupert to live while the work was being carried out? It would have to be nearby, so she could supervise things. She rather favoured the Sloane Court Hotel, just up the road. It would be nice to be waited on and she’d have enough on her plate what with work and the renovation. The last thing she’d want to do was go home to a rented flat and fix Rupert’s dinner. No, the hotel was the answer, and she just hoped Rupert wasn’t going to be a tight-wad about it.

  He was OK about money, though, she had to give him that. But she knew too many cases of girls marrying generous men who turned overnight into parsimonious old miseries. It was as if they were programmed to spend to attract a mate, and then the moment the cat was in the bag it was zip tight and batten down the hatches. She threw the hairbrush down on the vanity unit, which boasted soppy ‘his ‘n’ hers’ floral-motif washbasins. The ‘his’ basin remained unused: Rupert had never spent the night in Balham, she didn’t want him growing to like the area and suggesting they move there instead of Chelsea.

  She slowly unwound the towel from her body and reached for the body lotion that cost £75 a bottle, but in her case had been a freebie from the magazine. Soon she wouldn’t have to rely on handouts, she would be able to go to Harvey Nicks and just buy whatever she fancied. She didn’t love money for its own sake, she wouldn’t say she was greedy, but it did make life so much more enjoyable. Knowing that she was marrying into the Beauval-Tench fortune meant she could relax, sit back and just enjoy the ride. You could hardly blame her for feeling pleased with herself.

  For this was what we had come to, wasn’t it? Religion was over, except insofar as it related to spa treatments. Guilt was finished: you no longer owed anyone anything, that was what therapy taught us. All that remained was a long luxurious journey into self-discovery, and the more sumptuous the journey, the more richness and colour and five-star hotels you could cram in on the way, the better you could say your life had been. And Lydia had every intention of making sure that hers would be a first-class Ananda-type experience.

  In the foyer of the National Theatre, Jane sipped her gin and tonic and waited for Will. He was bringing a friend along for tonight’s performance, an arrogant hippy from Wales who never washed. He came to stay once a year and Jane kept a special set of sheets for him that she laundered separately at a very high temperature.

  She sat back to enjoy the sight of the middle classes at play, eating salad while listening to the pre-theatre jazz, band. Three young men were playing that vague kind of music that doesn’t bother with a tune, the sort that people listened to in the early Sixties, tapping their Hush Puppies in a fug of Woodbine smoke. You could see people looking pleased to have signed up for Tom Stoppard’s new play to then find they got a bit of free jazz thrown in. There is nothing the British public likes better than a bargain.

  Five minutes to go and still no sign of them, though there was no shortage of middle-aged men. Glasses and grey hair everywhere, as you’d expect at a play dealing with Shelling, Kant and Hegel. It wasn’t exactly rock and roll. But that was the beauty of the theatre, it made you feel like a bright young thing, unlike at the cinema where too many people were under thirty. Exeept for the French Institute, where cinephiles came in all ages. She’d be there tomorrow. With or without her Brief Encounter hero. Only one more day to go.

  She was just wondering whether to get herself another drink when she saw them coming towards her. Two old blokes with ponytails, she thought in a disloyal shock of recognition, before reassuring herself. Will had an elegant air of success, while his college friend looked like the loser he was. He had several degrees and lived on the dole in North Wales, having turned his back on working in favour of what he and Stendhal termed the tender sensations.

  Will kissed her on both cheeks and Jane was glad that Phil made no attempt to greet her beyond a brief nod.

  ‘I’m look
ing forward to this, aren’t you, Phil?’ asked Jane, deciding she had better make an effort. ‘The reviews have been pretty good on the whole.’

  Phil gave her a pitying smile. ‘I never read reviews, I prefer to make my own mind up. You can’t trust critics, no point expecting an honest opinion from people who are in the pockets of newspaper proprietors.’

  ‘No, of course not,’ Jane said. ‘Horrible capitalists. Shall we go up?’

  As the curtain went up, Jane was glad it was Stoppard and not Shakespeare. There was nothing worse than sitting through one of those so-called comedies and hearing the audience show off by laughing at jokes that weren’t funny. ‘T’was not a . . . t’was a pricket’ Cue howls of phoney laughter. Any allusion to the horns of a cuckold and the house would be rocking in their seats to prove they understood the significance of sixteenth-century humour. Stoppard was much safer, particularly a new play where few could claim to know the lines.

  After the performance, they made their way slowly down the wide stairs as Phil and Will dissected the play in loud detail.

  ‘I’m surprised that Stoppard shows so little understanding of deconstruction,’ complained Phil, ‘considering he was arguably the first postmodernist.’

  Jane dropped hack in the crowd and pretended she wasn’t with them.

  ‘I’m more staggered by his failure to treat Bakunin as a thinker,’ said Will. ‘It’s well-known that he could have been just as tyrannical as Marx.’

  ‘But surely you see that Stoppard is afraid of Bakunin?’

  They stepped outside to face the rain driving in from the west, streaking the concrete façade of the theatre. After three decades of ridicule, concrete was back, but it still looked rubbish in wet weather. Will and Phil went ahead, walking in step, ponytails nodding. They cut up the stairs to Waterloo Bridge and waited for Jane while they completed their critique.