The Next Best Thing

by Sarah Long

  They bought their coffees and sat down at a table behind a pillar. Around them were ladies who lunch, some dishevelled students, and a lot of older people making the most of their freedom passes to cruise around the city’s treasures. Embarked upon the thirty-year jamboree that made up modern retirement, as opposed to digging the allotment for a year before dropping dead, which was how it used to be.

  ‘I’m glad you liked the Chinese slippers, I thought you would,’ said Rupert.

  ‘We should always come here,’ Jane said. ‘There’s so much to see, you could come every Friday for the rest of your life and still not have done it all.’

  ‘What shall we do next time?’

  ‘I quite fancy the Gothic stuff.’

  ‘I quite fancy you.’

  Her legs were crossed beneath the table and he slipped his hand between her knees.

  She laughed at him across the table, she felt feckless and free. ‘When are you off to Chile?’

  By tacit agreement, they hadn’t discussed the party, or Lydia, or Will; it was understood that their time together was not about the other stuff that made up their daily lives. But Jane felt confident enough now to ask the question: holidays were safe ground, it wasn’t like she was asking him if they had set a date for the wedding. Even so, he looked uncomfortable.

  ‘Tomorrow night. I wish I was going with you.’

  ‘Only because you don’t know me well enough yet to find me disappointing.’

  He laughed. ‘Do yourself down, why don’t you?’ Then, seriously, ‘You could never disappoint me, I know that.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Because you’re perfect. Scruffy perfect, that is, not shiny perfect.’

  He rummaged in his coat pocket and pulled out a crumpled brown paper bag.

  ‘I won’t see you again before Christmas, obviously, so I’ve brought you your present. Sorry I didn’t get round to wrapping it.’

  She opened the bag and found it was full of tiny bulbs, like dolly-sized onions.

  ‘They’re fritillaries,’ he said, ‘rare and exquisite, they made me think of you.’

  She ran her fingers over them and in her mind’s eye saw how the flowers would look, dainty and bell-like on slender stems.

  ‘I didn’t get you anything,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘It’s not a barter, it’s a present. They do quite well in pots, but you need to protect the shoots from frost.’

  ‘It’s a lovely present. I’ll think of you when I plant them, then when they flower they’ll remind me of you again.’

  That would be in spring, the most exciting time in the garden, culminating in the Chelsea Flower Show. Maybe they could go together next year and look out for other fritillaries, make notes together on the back of nursery brochures. Have a glass of champagne in the Veuve Clicquot tent and argue about which garden they liked best. Her favourite this year had been a Mediterranean garden with a rusty old shed and mauve and grey herbs self-seeded in the cracks between the stones. She thought he would like that too.

  ‘Did you go to Chelsea this year?’ she asked.

  ‘I went with some clients, which slightly took the edge off it. Nothing like a dose of corporate hospitality to rob an event of its atmosphere, and for some reason they all want to go to Chelsea.’

  ‘Just think,’ she said, ‘I might have seen you there, jostling along behind the rope to look at that dreadful garden with the double staircase.’

  ‘I know the one you mean, with the grotto at the bottom.’

  ‘In that fake stone that looks sort of luminous . . .’

  ‘We’ll go together next year,’ he said, ‘so we can spot the shockers together.’

  He would still be single in May. The wedding was planned for June; it would be his last Chelsea Flower Show as a single man.

  Jane carefully put the fritillaries into her handbag, zipping them up in the centre compartment. ‘You should bring me back some seeds from South America,’ she said, ‘like a Victorian botanist returning from an expedition. I could be your faithful assistant, labelling them up and nurturing their growth at home while you go off round the world for another five years.’

  ‘No, you could come with me. I’d like to see you in a pair of plus fours and knee-high explorer boots. I’d especially like to see you take them off in the flickering torchlight of our two-man tent.’

  He touched her knee again, and his hand burned against her skin. She felt exhilarated. She was also aware that it was nearly time to leave.

  ‘I must go.’ Those three dreary, disappointing words.

  ‘Have you got the car today?’

  ‘Yes, it’s in the car park by the Institute.’

  ‘Good, you can give me a lift.’

  ‘I’m going the wrong way . . .’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. You can drop me off by the school and I’ll get a cab from there.’

  ‘It’ll take you twice as long . . .’

  ‘But I get to see you for longer.’

  There was a moment of panic when they arrived at the car and Jane thought she’d lost her keys, but they were eventually unearthed , hidden beneath the bag of fritillaries.

  ‘Shall I drive?’ Rupert asked as she unlocked the car. ‘Only if you want me to, obviously.’

  Jane threw him the keys over the car and walked round to change sides. ‘I would love you to drive,’ she said. ‘Do you realise I have never once sat in the passenger seat of this car in the six years I’ve had it.’

  ‘Does Will not . . . ?’

  ‘Nope. He doesn’t do machines.’

  Rupert curled his lip in amused contempt. How affected was that, in the twenty-first century, to say you didn’t do machines?

  ‘Still uses a quill and ink does he, for his work?’

  ‘Apart from his computer, I was about to say.’

  She settled back and relaxed, enjoying the novelty of being driven. He drove calmly, confidently, as she knew he would.

  ‘It’s in Leinster Square,’ she said, ‘off Bayswater.’

  He parked just round the corner, in Leinster Terrace, and switched off the engine. Jane went to open her door, but he reached across and caught her arm, pulling her towards him.

  ‘You’ve got five minutes to go,’ he said, ‘let’s not waste them.’

  When he kissed her, she was squeezed over the gearbox, bringing back memories of teenage dating.

  ‘We have to swap telephone numbers now,’ he said, ‘it’s no use pretending any more.’

  He passed her his phone and she gave him hers and they keyed in their numbers. They’d got each other logged now and there would be no more chance meetings, no more tragic thoughts of happiness lost if one of them failed to show. It was up to them and fate had nothing to do with it. She got out of the car and stood awkwardly on the pavement, waiting for him to join her.

  ‘Have a lovely holiday,’ she said, insincere and conventional all of a sudden. She wouldn’t see him for three whole weeks.

  ‘I’ll think of you,’ he said, standing beside her, unwilling to leave.

  The moment was lost as Portia’s mother appeared from nowhere.

  ‘Hallo, Jane,’ she said, looking approvingly at Rupert. Her eye was evidently trained to identify moneyed bankers from two hundred paces. ‘Is this your husband?’

  ‘No, no . . . as a matter of fact, I don’t have a husband,’ said Jane, as though that made things better. ‘This is just a friend.’

  Rupert nodded at Portia’s mother. ‘I’ll be off then,’ he said to Jane, ‘have a nice Christmas.’

  And then he was gone. As she walked towards the school, Jane saw him climb into a taxi and drive away. Beside her, Portia’s mother was giving a detailed account of her holiday plans: Christmas in Cambodia followed by a river cruise in Burma; they wouldn’t normally risk a cruise but this one should be all right as there were only forty cabins, totally luxurious and the obscure location meant it wouldn’t attract the wrong sort.

  Liberty came out
bristling with rolled-up paintings and tinselly bits of stuff, and a plate piled high with gaudy marzipan angels. Her end-of-term excitement washed over Jane and lifted her spirits. That was the glory of children: they were the ultimate consolation prize, putting everything into perspective.

  ‘We played a game today, mama,’ she said. ‘Miss Evans divided the room into five continents and everyone had to go and stand in the continent where they were going for Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, so did you stand in Europe then?’

  ‘No, I sat at the back, because we’re not going anywhere. You weren’t allowed to play if you weren’t going anywhere,’ she added, without resentment. ‘It was only me and Phoenix sitting at the back: she can’t go anywhere because her mum’s having a baby. Guess which continent had the most?’

  ‘Asia,’ said Jane, thinking of Portia.

  ‘Yes! Well done, Mum, you are the cleverest mummy in the world. And the prettiest.’

  They got to the car and Jane began fishing around in her bag for the keys. She pulled out the fritillaries, her address book, her Christmas lists, a smashed-up Dime bar, but they weren’t there. How stupid of her, she must have forgotten to take them back from Rupert. It was Portia’s mum’s fault, putting them off like that, but lucidly she had his number, she’d have to call him right away. She walked away from her daughter, calling up his number. Come on, she wanted to say to him, please come here right now and take me away with you.

  Clutching her Christmas booty to her chest, Liberty looked on resentfully. ‘Why haven’t you got the keys, mummy, who are you ringing?’

  But before she had made the call, a taxi drew up alongside them, and Rupert was calling to her through the opened window, dangling the keys.

  She ran up to take them, relieved.

  ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘No, my fault.’

  ‘Is that your daughter?’ He smiled at Liberty who glowered back at him.

  ‘Sorry, she’s not normally that cross, just a bit overwrought, you know, all the excitement.’

  ‘Bye then,’ he said, and as the taxi pulled away he blew her a kiss.

  When she got into the driving seat, Jane had to adjust the seat, sliding it forward to the normal position, noting the disparity between the length of his legs and hers. It would be three whole weeks before they met again.

  ‘Who was that man?’ asked Liberty. ‘Why did he have your keys?’

  ‘He just helped do something with the car,’ she said, surprised by the glibness of her lie, ‘and then I forgot to take the keys back. Can I have one of your marzipan angels?’

  While Jane and Rupert were getting romantic with each other in the Victoria and Albert Museum, Will was getting romantic with himself in the London Library, dreaming of the glory to come. His new book would be even better received than his last, offering as it did another penetrating insight into a vanishing culture. Like all great travel writers, he had a talent for drawing lessons from backward tribes and pointing out moral parallels with the modern world.

  In front of him on the desk was a pile of relevant books: Black Elk Speaks, The Wind is my Mother, The Way of the Shaman. Today was his last opportunity for research before his creative life was put on hold for the enforced tedium of the Christmas break. It infuriated Will that he had to play along with the conventions of organised society. He was an artist, so why should he be bothered with Christmas shopping, school holidays and the inconvenient closing hours of his resource libraries?

  He dropped Neither Wolf Nor Dog back on the heap and turned instead to an unrelated work by his mentor Wilfred Thesiger that he always carried with him.

  ‘Mountains have always attracted me,’ he read, ‘early in 1952 I invited the mountaineer Eric Shipton to lunch with me at the Travellers Club when he suggested I travel in Hunza in northern Pakistan.’

  That was more like it, that was how Will’s life should be. He didn’t suppose Wilfred Thesiger had to worry about playing happy families round a turkey, he would have gone off for years at a time to fulfil his thirst for travel. There was a huge world out there, it seemed a crime to stagnate at home instead. A life less ordinary, that was what Will deserved.

  He picked up another favourite, The (treat Railway Bazaar, and read with envy of Paul Theroux’s escape by train to Istanbul.

  I was doing a bunk, myself: I hadn’t nailed my colours to the mast; I had no job — no-one would notice me falling silent, kissing my wife, and boarding the 15.30 alone . . . the train was rumbling through Clapham, I decided that travel was flight and pursuit in equal parts . . .’

  Yes indeed, Paul, thought Will, you and I both, we understand the importance of flight and pursuit, of going out in search of enlightenment rather than sinking slowly into homely nothingness. There was no doubt about it, Will would soon need to be making a journey of his own.

  He decided to call it a day; the lights on his bike were on the blink and he wanted to get home before it got dark. He gathered up his papers into the battered old leather briefcase that had served him well for three decades. He nodded at the girl at the desk who had fancied him for ages – he knew what that blush meant, every time he caught her eye — and went outside to unlock his bike. It was an old-fashioned black sit-up-and-beg type, with a wicker basket attached to the front. It was not out of character, he thought with a smile, for him to have a bike that was unlike every other one in the rack.

  The journey home was a good opportunity for reflection, and today Will’s thoughts were centred around the theme of an extraordinary mind trapped in a life of domestic routine. He wondered whether he wasn’t putting Jane into an unfair position. Would she really want to be held responsible for holding him back, for being the brakes on his creative talent? She was far from being a nag, he had her too well-schooled for that, but it was the reality of her and Liberty that kept him grounded in smallness.

  He let himself into the house and picked up a handful of envelopes from the mat. On his one-to-ten scale of dull bourgeois habits, the sending of Christmas cards stood at around eight, and rose to ten when the cards contained round-robin letters. One of the envelopes felt suspiciously thick, and Will was not disappointed when he ripped it open.

  ‘What a year!’ it began. ‘A promotion for Jim, a great first eleven season for Alex, a gold life-saving badge for Chloe, and as if all that wasn’t enough, we rounded off with a super autumn half-term break in Tuscany! Lucky for us all I’d been taking Italian evening classes!’

  Christ almighty, thought Will, I should do Jane a favour and file it straight in the bin. She always felt obliged to reply to pitiful letters like this, didn’t seem to have learned about moving on, about drawing a line, about not bothering to stay in touch with bores. He threw the cards down on the kitchen table and filled the kettle to make himself a herbal tea. Liberty’s glittery angel stood on the windowsill, a testimony to what can be achieved with toilet rolls and kitchen foil. Will smiled at the thought of his daughter; he loved her, of course, but that didn’t mean he needed to see her every day. His experience with his sons taught him that kids didn’t disappear just because you were off the scene for a bit. Liberty would still be there when he got back from his travels, however long they took.

  He heard a key in the lock, then Liberty came running downstairs to see him.

  ‘Hallo, big face,’ he said. ‘Have you broken up?’

  Liberty nodded and offered him her last marzipan angel.

  ‘You can go and get changed then,’ he said, helping himself, ‘hang up that vile uniform and wear something normal for a change.’

  Jane frowned at him as she came into the kitchen.

  She didn’t want Will giving Liberty a complex about her school clothes. It was bad enough as it was getting her dressed in the morning, without him adding his unhelpful comments.

  ‘You’re back early,’ she said, taking off her coat and throwing it onto the sofa.

  ‘It’s my concession to Christmas,’ he said, ‘my own little take on the seasonal
go-slow, although naturally I despise the idea of normal life grinding to a halt for spurious religious reasons. A simple pagan festival appropriated by a corrupt and powerful church, and now degenerated into a materialistic riot of greed and gluttony.’

  ‘Killjoy,’ said Jane.

  ‘What’s materialistic?’ asked Liberty.

  ‘It’s wanting things,’ said Jane, ‘you know all about that. And gluttony means eating too much.’

  ‘Here’s a thing,’ said Will, holding up his finger as a prelude to the important information about to follow. ‘Did you know that the average preparation time for a meal twenty years ago was sixty minutes, and today it is just thirteen minutes. So you should count yourself lucky!’ ‘Another one of Dad’s useless facts,’ said Liberty, unimpressed.

  He was like a magpie, thought Jane, picking up shiny nuggets of information that he brought home to the family nest and expected them all to admire.

  Will looked Jane up and down as she wiped the table clean and set out a glass of milk and a min I chocolate log for Liberty. She was looking pretty today in a slightly prissy way, wearing a neat green cardigan, and even a touch of make-up, which she didn’t normally bother with during the day.

  ‘You look a bit dolled-up,’ he said. ‘A bit Home Counties come to town, if you don’t mind my saying so. Have you been on a date or something?’

  Jane was annoyed to feel herself blushing. ‘You know I often go out on Friday afternoons,’ she said, plunging the dishes into the sink. ‘It’s my cinema day.’

  ‘So it is,’ he said, like a well-meaning uncle. ‘What did you see, any good?’

  ‘I didn’t go actually, not today. I went to the V&A instead.’

  So far, so truthful, there was no point in lying.

  ‘What’s the viannay?’

  ‘A museum, darling.’

  ‘Ugh, boring. I hate museums.’

  ‘How perfect,’ said Will, ‘pretending you’re up from the shires in your little twinset to take in our national art treasures. Leaving home at ten o’clock on a cheap day return, and hurrying back in time to make your husband’s dinner. It’s such a charming image, it’s almost enough to make me marry you and whisk you off to the shires.’