After Everything

by Suellen Dainty

  Sandy laughed. No one, including himself, could bring themselves to say the three little syllables: suicide.

  ‘I have problems explaining that myself,’ he said. ‘And I was there, or at least they tell me I was. In the beginning, I couldn’t remember much and I pretended it was an accident. But now, let me give it my best shot. Suicide. There it is, out in the open at last. And not at all difficult.’

  He meant his words to be light-hearted, but Carolyn’s face crumpled and she began to weep.

  ‘Please, I didn’t mean to upset you,’ he said. ‘What is it?’

  She scrubbed her face with her hands and didn’t answer.

  ‘Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad,’ he said, shifting away from her on the sofa. As an afterthought, he patted her arm. She collapsed against him. Her head leaned on his shoulder. He regretted responding to her cards. He wanted to disentangle himself from this woman he hardly knew and slope off back home to admire his evening news presenter.

  ‘I know how you felt,’ she whispered. ‘I feel the same way too. And still I walked away from you.’

  ‘But I haven’t given it a second thought,’ said Sandy, still trying to extricate himself. ‘And the whole thing has its advantages. I’ve given up drinking and I don’t even miss it. Really. Well, sometimes I do and then I think of the money saved.’

  ‘Please, no more jokes.’

  Somewhere upstairs a clock struck six times. If he left now, he might make it back in time for the news.

  ‘Can you stay and talk for a bit?’ she asked. ‘Just for a little while.’

  ‘But your husband must be due home,’ said Sandy. Had he met her husband? What did he do? He couldn’t remember.

  ‘He’s in Salisbury. Some medical malpractice case.’ She stood up and paced around the room, rearranging pots of orchids and piles of books as she went. She raised her shoulders almost to her ears, then let them flop.

  ‘I know I have everything, just everything. House here, holidays four times a year, children doing well. But I can’t stop crying. I tried antidepressants but they made me feel so anxious. And I still cried.’ Her voice rose. She tittered and scraped her hair back.

  ‘Then last year my husband sent me away for a fortnight to this kind of rehab place, where you try to reconfigure everything, help yourself to feel better. Someone in his chambers went and everything completely changed for him. But nothing happened for me. I still see a therapist each week, but I don’t know if I can go on. I’m terrified.’

  ‘Come on,’ he said, edging away from her. Suddenly he craved a drink. He wanted the insulation of alcohol to wrap around him like a woollen coat. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  ‘I’m not so sure anymore.’ Her voice broke. ‘I think what I miss is being busy all the time, now the children are so much older. Before, I didn’t have a moment to think about anything except looking after them and my husband, the shopping, the cooking, organising the cleaner and the gardener and the nanny. But that isn’t a life. It’s directing traffic. I keep thinking if we’re going to live that much longer now, we’ve got to make it count for something.’

  She started to weep again, large tears dripping down and collecting at the end of her nose. Sandy wanted a cigarette, the sensation of breathing down sharp smoke so he could think for a minute about how to reply.

  ‘I’m sorry, but you’re talking to the wrong person. My life management skills are minimal at best. I wasn’t a good husband and I regret that, very much. I’ve only just realised I never spent any time with my kids. I’d never thought about it before. I’m a late onset loser. I peaked early and never got used to it.’

  Carolyn smiled timidly. ‘It’s not a competition. There are no prizes for who’s lived the most fatuous life.’ She wiped her eyes. ‘Besides, you’re not such a loser. I think you’re much nicer now than you used to be.’

  ‘You mean failure becomes me,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you’re right.’ He considered the notion. It was fully dark now. The topiary pyramids cast long shadows in the lights from neighbouring houses. He had missed the news. He wanted to get up and leave. He wasn’t used to talking without drinking. Without drinking there wasn’t much to say.

  She came across and sat down next to him, turning her face to his and kissing him first on the cheek, then on the mouth. She smelled of fresh coffee. He hadn’t been physically close to a woman since the divorce and the feeling was alarming.

  It was uncomfortable perched on the oversized sofa, feeling the weight of her sitting next to him, seeing her small fingers clasped together. He shifted and crossed his legs. He tried to move away, but Carolyn moved closer and placed her hand on his knee. She kissed him again, with her mouth closed, pure like a first kiss. Her eyelids fluttered against the stubble on his cheek.

  He worried about flaking lip skin, cigarette breath, bits of lunch between his teeth. Her hand was still on his knee, moving up to his groin. He felt himself shrivel and then begin to sweat. Her hand stopped moving upwards and began rubbing his thigh in slow circles. His penis jumped like a minnow in a stream then retracted. It wasn’t used to this. He wasn’t used to this.

  For a moment he was outside himself, peering in through the French doors. He saw his belly straining against the serviceable worn Marks and Spencer shirt; his bony shins bare and pale above his socks. He saw his bunched-up trousers, his body contorted into a half-sitting, half-slouching position with his knees pointing one way and his shoulders turned in the opposite direction, lank grey tufts of hair curling over his collar. An impotent old man kissing a sad rich housewife. It was ridiculous. He would remove her hand from his knee and extract himself from this situation.

  But he didn’t move and then she kissed him again, the same pure, dry-lipped kiss. There was something so trusting in the way her body turned to his, something so alien to seduction, that he softened and bent towards her. Her mouth was warm and tender and he returned her kiss. She withdrew and licked his lips, starting from one side and moving to the other. Still he didn’t move except to open his mouth just a little, an involuntary movement. Her tongue probed the delicate skin inside his lip. She reached for a switch on the wall behind the sofa and the room fell dark.

  Sandy was scared. He heard the sweep of clothes being taken off and landing on the floor, her small sweet voice saying his name. Deft fingers unbuttoned his shirt and slipped it off his shoulders. They unbuckled his belt and undid his flies. Somehow his clothes were on the floor and he was lying naked and sober next to Carolyn from the school run.

  It was the first time in many years he had been anywhere near a female without a full bar rolling inside his gut; beer to make him jovial before dinner, wine to produce some sort of conversation during the meal and then something stronger afterwards. Without that armour, he had no idea how to stroke a breast, or caress a nipple. All the small activities that came before intercourse had vanished from his consciousness. His entire body felt unnaturally sensitive as if layers of skin had somehow sloughed off. He imagined pale nerve endings jerking in alarm and so he lay stiff and still.

  She was the one who touched his chest, teased his nipples and circled his stomach with her forefinger. She was the one to move closer so her breath played on his neck and her hand could trace the grizzle on his thighs and make its way to the dead weight of his penis hanging between his legs.

  She’ll give up now, he thought. She won’t go on. There would be a rueful smile, a quiet apology and he would burrow into his clothes and scuttle away. If they ran into each other again, they could pretend this thing, this embarrassing incident, had not happened.

  But she did go on. Her fingers kept moving in slow steady circles, displaying a confidence not seen in her teary confessions. His poor tired organ began to flutter before subsiding. It stirred again and he felt something like hope and then nothing except shame, until suddenly it went up and stayed up. He was hard for the first time in years and, in spite of everything, he smiled in the darkness.

  He relaxed and grew warm,
the way he used to feel after the first drink of the day. She leaned over him and he felt himself slide into her, secret and warm and damp. She began to move.

  He’d always assumed the masterful position, had tolerated foreplay as the means to the end. He’d been keen on the grunt, the deep penetration, the energetic thrusts, the slap of flesh on flesh. He’d been used to women, Penny included, who writhed with precision and moaned stridently, who efficiently fingered their clitorises as they drove themselves towards orgasm.

  This was different. So sweet and slow. So kind, measured and comfortable, an act of tenderness between friends. He could feel the slippery folds of her, how she lengthened and thickened as she circled her hips and caressed his face in the dark until they came together in a dream-like moment of pleasure that continued far longer than anything he could remember. Afterwards they lay entwined on the sofa, the flush of her face hot on his shoulder.

  He felt her cheeks curve into a smile. ‘I didn’t have that in mind when I suggested a walk. Really. You must believe me. Or do you think I’m a terrible old tart?’

  ‘Well, just a bit, not that much. No need to sing the Carole King song,’ he said. ‘It was something of a surprise though. A nice surprise. What’s the word I’m looking for? Languorous? Lovely? I’ll go for lovely.’

  She kissed his shoulder, the soft part just under the bone. ‘I’ll go for that one too,’ she said. They were silent for a while. He thought she might have fallen asleep, but there was a voice in the dark. ‘Talk to me. Tell me something about yourself.’

  Sandy felt an internal shuddering, as if his ribs were about to collapse. Whatever post-coital ease he had felt vanished. He didn’t know what to say.

  All his conversations, sober, middling and drunk, were predictable. They travelled familiar circuits. There was the morse code of the male clan where he felt safe. There was the other stuff women liked to hear, the linguistic foreplay of anecdotes about school and childhood, dogs and parents, old girlfriends and childish crushes. His marital dialogue had been predictable, consisting of children, domestic trivia, possible household renovations, bills and holiday plans.

  Even now he might be able to bluff his way through a conversation with former colleagues about the music business, deals and studios and the big old days. But the idea of an untethered conversation bobbing in the air like a helium balloon was terrifying.

  ‘You know who I am,’ he began, after clearing his throat. ‘You know my ex-wife and my children, where I used to live. You know I used to write songs. Now, I’m in the arse end of Battersea in a rented flat on my own. I don’t do much of anything. I can’t think what to do anymore.’

  ‘Come on,’ she said, her arm resting on his chest. ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘When I was little,’ she said, ‘I wanted to be an archaeologist. I thought it would be fantastic to find out how people lived thousands of years ago. But then someone told me you had to spend months brushing dirt off stones with paintbrushes, so I changed my mind.’

  He told her his childhood ambition was to become a doctor. ‘My father worked in an insurance office. I didn’t want to do that and I liked the idea of making people feel better, of driving around the country with a black bag beside me. But then I realised I hated the sight of blood. It made me want to vomit. I still vomit sometimes, but not at the sight of blood.’

  They shifted closer together. There was a shawl on the arm of the sofa and Carolyn drew it around them.

  ‘My father drank a lot,’ said Sandy. ‘He used to stagger up the staircase to bed every night. My mother explained it away by the war, all the horrors he’d seen. But she didn’t explain why she joined him by the drinks trolley night after night. He died about a year ago, soon after my divorce. My mother’s still alive, in a nursing home outside Woking. I’m a shitty kind of son. I haven’t seen her for months.

  ‘Anyhow, I hated the smell of alcohol when I was a kid. I remember the whole house reeking of stale whisky and Dunhill cigarettes in the morning. I started drinking at Oxford with Jeremy. Then I wondered what had taken me so long. Everything was so much easier. Talking, sex, life. The funny thing is that when I started drinking, Jeremy almost stopped. He’s a committed one glass a day guy now.’

  Now he was almost gabbling. He’d start on about his dead puppy soon and how his father despised him for not being able to catch twenty tennis balls in a row. Having dreaded a conversation without an agenda, he was beginning to understand how people might want to lie in the dark and talk about anything that entered their heads, how liberating that notion might be. Just to open your mouth and speak of hopes and fears. But how could he speak to someone else about these things when he refused to acknowledge them to himself?

  He shut his eyes and saw Polly, sitting cross-legged in dappled shade by Jericho Wharf. She was wearing overalls with daisies printed on them, and her hair was pulled back into a ponytail.

  It was late afternoon, a golden haze hovering above the canal. The intention was to grill each other on pronunciation in Chaucer, but the heat had made them too lethargic to study and they were idly discussing Donne and beauty. Polly told him that she disliked the way she looked, the way men slavered over her like hounds after prey. ‘Two hundred years ago, I wouldn’t have rated a second glance. Two hundred years from now, I might be considered a freak. It’s just that I fit the mould now and I can’t stand the way most men look at me. But you’re not like them,’ she said, with the faint hint of a question in her voice. He shook his head, almost truthfully. If she hadn’t told him that she’d been in love with the local vet in her Cumbrian town, and they planned to marry after she graduated, he might have fallen hopelessly for her. As it was, he was content enough with their friendship, and, if he was being honest, he enjoyed the status of being her companion and confidant. It was the first time he had considered female beauty as a kind of tyranny and it made him protective of her and their easy conversations.

  ‘You’re certainly not like that friend of yours, Jeremy,’ Polly continued.

  Jeremy had recently discarded a first-year student, making fun of her flat chest in public, and the girl’s mournful face with red-rimmed eyes had become an uncomfortable fixture wherever they went. ‘He didn’t have to be so cruel,’ Polly said. ‘It’s almost as if he enjoyed hurting her.’

  Sandy defended Jeremy. ‘He’s not like that. He’s not a bad person, just a bit thoughtless.’

  Polly would not be persuaded. ‘You wouldn’t humiliate someone like that, I know you wouldn’t.’ She was right. He wouldn’t because he was always so grateful to any girl who paid him attention. Jeremy regarded it as his due, nothing less.

  Carolyn nestled closer and gently massaged his forehead. The push of her fingers on his temples was soothing, almost soporific. The words were already gathering in his mind, mushrooming into the narrative he had never disclosed to anyone. He had carried the story for so long that its weight was now an accustomed part of him. He and Jeremy had sworn to each other. They would never speak of it again. It had never happened. Tempting as it was to think of whispering these things to this warm stranger, he wouldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell her. Not now, not yet.

  His hand was on her stomach and he recognised the small hard ridge of a Caesarean scar. Penny had one in the same place. He compared his life to Carolyn’s, the squalor of his flat against her dust-free surfaces. He saw her diary bristling with appointments for lunches, hairdressers’ appointments, and elegant dinners with lawyers discussing recent court triumphs. He had nothing except a pile of bills and dirty laundry.

  It was stupid and fanciful, but he allowed himself to imagine them far away from London, in the country somewhere, Wales perhaps, in a small cottage with a kitchen fire, a piano in the corner and hens clucking in the yard. He knew it was a dangerous sentimental fantasy, but he indulged himself anyway, lying there in the dark.

  He saw her by the stove. He saw himself bringing in wood and them both in bed, making l
ove under a quilt. They would bring nothing of the past with them. They would talk of nothing but the present and the future. He would tinker on the piano and wait for another perfect note.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ she asked.

  ‘About an old song, by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young,’ he said. ‘I knew Graham Nash a bit. We were going to do something together once, but it never happened.’

  He thought he might fall asleep, but she began to talk of her own youth. She’d gone to secretarial college in Cambridge. ‘So now my husband tells people I studied at Cambridge. He thinks people are impressed by that sort of thing. I suppose I must be too, because I don’t contradict him.’

  She told him how she’d been in love with the same boy all through her teenage years. That was the real reason she’d gone to Cambridge. He was reading economics and she followed him. She became pregnant and he dumped her.

  ‘I had an abortion,’ she said. ‘No one knew. I got the train down to London from secretarial college one afternoon. I’ve never told anyone this before. For years afterwards, I couldn’t even remember where I went to have it. And then earlier this year I was driving across Putney Bridge with a friend and she pointed out this redbrick building on the corner, just near the river. She said it used to be an abortion clinic. Then I remembered. I’d been driving past it for years and completely wiped it from my mind.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, envying the ease of her confession. Women were different like that. Penny had relished sharing her secrets. So had the others, confiding physical peculiarities of past lovers and childhood traumas. How trusting they were, offering them up like gifts. Then he must have fallen asleep because his head jerked up from his chest with a painful crack and he knew he should leave.