‘Pregnant.’
‘Oh.’ There’s a grudging admiration injected into this single syllable. Christopher knew he would jump to the wrong conclusion, ascribing to him the torrid afternoons George aspired to, that singularly failed to happen.
‘Three months.’
Gina has talked about the chattering classes. There is a purpose in telling George. He’ll pass on the news in the spirit of randy camaraderie.
Having exchanged these greetings he and George are at a loss. He has assumed that the momentum of his good intentions would follow through. He was wrong. George, jealous in his wrong conclusion, is somehow suddenly lonelier. One thing Christopher has come to realise since Marjory’s death, and Gina’s departure and return, is that there are strata of loneliness. He thinks it a shame that having for so long shared this tiny portion of the surface of the earth, spoken the same language, trod the same byways, known the same people, they have so little in common. Out of sympathy he is almost tempted to invite George to tea – but doesn’t. Both Gina and Vanessa dislike George. Neither would make any attempt to disguise it. George would misinterpret his motives as flaunting his advantage, as he sees it. His sympathy for George doesn’t extend to disrupting the hard-won harmony back home.
‘Goodbye, George.’
‘Regards to your wee Scots bidie-in.’
He’s glad he didn’t invite him back. He leaves the path and wanders through the longer grass in the direction of the swing park. He often comes here, to sit on the bench nestled among the mulched bark, but waits now till the younger children have gone. He can sit just now because it’s empty. The days of a solitary old man blamelessly watching children are no more. He checks his trousers and the dog for burrs.
Perhaps next year he can bring the baby here and speculate with impunity. He finds it sad that the future scenarios of her and her child don’t seem to include a man, at least not in any of her discussions with him. This exclusion seems to be voluntary. He’s noticed the attention she receives. The postman, a chronically shy man in his early thirties who delivered Christopher’s mail for five years with disembodied efficiency now finds the letter box unassailable and hovers, uncertain, hoping for something that has nothing to do with Christopher. If Christopher’s blurred outline appears in the opaque glass the correspondence arrives on the hall carpet in a decisive clump. He’s only one of a number. They won’t all be dissuaded by a child. Perhaps she’ll meet someone.
Her accepting the house thing has given him an inner warmth. He hasn’t felt this gratified since primary school, when Miss McGuire rewarded his spelling with a long red tick. He was eight and she in her early twenties. He can still hear the score of the pen on paper, the short forceful downward diagonal and the tangential flick, fading to infinity. She used bath salts and some sort of lemon cologne that wafted, femininely. He thought her culture personified. He remembers flawless nails with half-moon cuticles. Beside her he felt small, grubby and inconsequential, caught in the searchlight of her sophistication when she looked at him, forgave his awkwardness, and moved on. In her twenties, he reflects, Gina’s age. I would pass her in the street, if she was now as she was then, and think her a child. She probably had children of her own, scarcely younger than I am. Grandchildren. She is probably dead now. Her lustrous hair grown dry, the skin papery and striated, the cuticles faded to the pallor of the surrounding quick. Why do we spend such a disproportionate portion of our life being old? Why grow up so fast? Why sprint to the tape to stand two feet away and loiter?
The cigar in his immobile hand has burned down to a grey cylinder. The swings are empty and sway with a tiny forlorn metallic creak, like the chirruping of a tardy cricket.
He knows he has been sitting too long, thinking too much, making himself indulgently sad, for no real reason other than the pleasant melancholy of nostalgia. The dog clairvoyantly stretches. He braces hands on knees and stands. The ash disappears into the mulch. His strides are short, lengthening as his joints loosen. He opts for an unobtrusive entrance and makes for the back lane. He reaches for the latch, stops, looks around. Irregular weeds sprout from ruptures in the cobbles. Overarching trees from gardens on both sides cast patches of green shade, a shifting mosaic in the evening breeze. Drooping telegraph wires cradle the light in receding curves. Something which has been gaining ground for months overtakes him. For the first time since listening to his mother read, he realises he is completely happy.
They are in the back room. He isn’t going to manage a quiet entrance. He can hear the voices from where he stands. They are too preoccupied to notice him yet. Vanessa is gesturing, the other hand holding the largest of his glasses of wine. Gina tilts her head back in laughing profile. Vanessa notices him and smiles, complicity. Gina’s glance follows Vanessa’s. She waves.
He catches a pitch, faint, personal, circumambient, as he acknowledges their smiles and walks towards them.
Four New Words for Love Page 23
