Friday Nights

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Well, he is painting again. He has started something. He’s started something rather good. He showed it to me.’

  ‘Did he?’ Eleanor said.

  The kettle gave a small scream, and switched itself off. Jules went to pick it up.

  She said over her shoulder, ‘Did he come on to you?’

  ‘Not really.’

  ‘Ah,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘What’s ah?’

  ‘Well,’ Eleanor said, ‘you probably look stable to him.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And especially,’ Blaise said, ‘when Karen is being destabilized. A bit.’

  Jules was ripping tea bags apart.

  She said, ‘What by?’

  ‘Guess,’ Blaise said.

  Jules turned round, a tea bag in each hand.

  ‘Surprise me.’

  ‘Jackson,’ Blaise said.

  ‘Or,’ said Eleanor, ‘a fantasy of Jackson.’

  ‘Lucas knows this,’ Blaise said. ‘Lucas knows and doesn’t know what to do and he’s painting as – as a kind of competition.’

  Jules poured water into the mugs and carried them over to the table.

  She said carelessly, ‘Jackson is not interested in her.’

  Blaise looked at the swollen tea bags bobbing on the surface of the water.

  ‘No, I don’t think he is.’

  Eleanor glanced up. She took her hand off the top of her stick and put both hands on the table.

  ‘I’d just got home,’ Blaise said, ‘from Lucas’s studio, from looking at Lucas’s painting, and the doorbell rang. And – well, it was Jackson.’

  ‘Jackson?’

  Jules was quite still. She stood a little apart from them, holding a milk carton. The room was too shadowy to see her face clearly.

  ‘I don’t really know him,’ Blaise said. ‘I mean, I’ve met him a few times and you always feel you know your girlfriends’ boyfriends, somehow, don’t you, you sort of feel predisposed to—’

  Jules moved forward and put the milk on the table.

  ‘What did he want?’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ Blaise said. ‘I couldn’t tell. He didn’t want a coffee or a drink or anything, he seemed quite OK just to stand in the sitting room.’

  ‘Did he mention Karen?’ Eleanor said. ‘Or Paula?’

  Blaise shook her head.

  Jules leaned across the table and began to squeeze the tea bags against the side of the mugs with a knife handle.

  She said again, ‘What did he want?’

  Blaise looked down.

  ‘He wanted to talk business.’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘He wanted to talk,’ Blaise said, ‘about buying into the business. About buying Karen’s half, about buying her out of our business.’

  Jules gave a little yelp. She spun round with the knife in her hand and flicked a sodden tea bag across the kitchen.

  ‘I’ll kill him,’ Jules said.

  Eleanor looked at Blaise.

  ‘And what,’ she said, ‘did you tell him?’

  ‘I said no. I said of course not.’

  ‘Good.’

  Blaise leaned forward a little.

  She said, her gaze directed at the tabletop, at the mugs of tea, ‘I said no. But it’s started me thinking.’

  Jules flung the knife after the tea bag, with a clatter.

  ‘And what,’ she shouted, ‘about me?’

  Chapter Seventeen

  No man had ever sent Lindsay flowers before. She’d had flowers from Paula, and occasionally a supermarket bunch in apology for something from Jules, but never, ever from a man. When she opened the door on Saturday morning to a florist delivery boy and saw the flowers in his arms, her first thought had been that they must be meant for someone else in the flats.

  ‘They won’t be for me.’

  The delivery boy, tall and skinny and black with a blazing white smile, was used to this kind of reaction in women.

  He said teasingly, ‘They’s from your mum, yeah?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Lindsay said. ‘Not my mother.’

  He put a delicate black hand into the flowers and pulled out a plastic card-holder with a tiny white envelope fixed in it.

  ‘That your name, yeah?’

  Lindsay peered.

  ‘Well, yes.’

  He adjusted the flowers so that she could take them.

  ‘There you go, then.’

  Lindsay took the flowers as reverentially as if they were a baby.

  ‘Can’t believe it.’

  ‘Somebody loves you,’ the boy said.

  Lindsay blushed into the flowers.

  The boy held out a delivery confirmation pad.

  ‘You sign here.’

  Awkwardly, round the flowers, Lindsay signed her name.

  ‘You have a nice day,’ the boy said. ‘You have a nice life, while you’re about it, yeah?’

  He gave Lindsay a last brilliant smile and loped away from her across the landing and down the staircase. He was whistling.

  ‘What you got?’ Noah said.

  Lindsay turned round. Noah was standing in his bedroom doorway, wearing socks and the top half of his pyjamas.

  ‘Look,’ Lindsay said.

  She knelt on the floor. Noah came over and looked at the flowers appraisingly, as if he were an expert.

  ‘See that little envelope?’

  Noah peered.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You want to open it?’

  Noah took the envelope out of the bunch and sat on the floor beside Lindsay. She reached out and pushed the front door shut. Noah looked at the envelope and then he turned it over and looked at the back. Lindsay watched him. There was no hurry. There was no hurry at all. In fact, the longer this delicious moment could be prolonged, the better.

  ‘Can I rip it?’ Noah said.

  Lindsay nodded.

  Noah looked at the envelope front again.

  ‘That’s your name.’

  ‘Yes.’

  Noah glanced at the flowers.

  ‘Is it a present?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Have I got one?’

  ‘Not this time.’

  ‘Oh, well,’ Noah said.

  He took a corner of the envelope and twisted it. It tore raggedly, tearing the card inside at the same time. Lindsay made herself sit still. Noah tore on doggedly, then he held the two pieces of envelope out to Lindsay.

  ‘Nothing inside.’

  ‘There is,’ Lindsay said. ‘There’s a card in there. It’s stuck inside.’

  Noah dropped one half of the torn envelope on the floor and investigated the other one. He extracted with difficulty a small piece of white card with a flower printed in the corner.

  ‘And the other half,’ Lindsay said. Her head felt full of light.

  Noah repeated the process and held the second piece of card out to Lindsay.

  ‘Put them together,’ Lindsay said. ‘Put them on the floor together, like a jigsaw.’

  ‘OK,’ Noah said.

  He put the two pieces on the floor, blank side upwards.

  ‘Daftie,’ Lindsay said. ‘Turn them over.’

  Noah turned the pieces over, very slowly. He laid them side by side.

  ‘What does it say?’

  Noah bent.

  ‘T,’ Noah said.

  ‘After that?’

  ‘Don’t know.’

  Lindsay crouched beside him.

  ‘It says,’ Lindsay said, ‘“Thanks for a great evening.”’

  Noah got up.

  ‘Can I have cereal?’

  ‘They’re from Derek,’ Lindsay said, conscious that she wanted to say his name, even to Noah. ‘Derek Sherlock. You remember Derek?’

  Noah thought.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you like him? Did you like Derek?’

  Noah thought some more. Derek had sat on his bedroom floor and allowed him to show him his knights and his fort without needing
to ask him anything. Noah had appreciated that. The rest of his life seemed permanently occupied by people asking him things.

  ‘Yes,’ Noah said.

  ‘He liked you,’ Lindsay said. Her voice sounded ridiculously happy to her. ‘He likes me. That’s why he sent me these flowers.’

  ‘OK,’ Noah said.

  ‘He wants to take us out. He wants to take us to Legoland.’

  Slowly, Noah smiled. His smile grew enormous. He nodded vigorously.

  ‘You know,’ Lindsay said, looking adoringly at her flowers, ‘I want to tell everyone. I want to ring everyone I know and tell them that Derek sent me flowers and wants to see me again. And again after that.’

  ‘And me,’ Noah said.

  Lindsay turned to look at him.

  ‘And you. Thank goodness there’s you to tell, at least. Thank goodness for that.’

  Noah said unexpectedly, ‘Ring Paula.’

  Lindsay smiled at him.

  ‘You’re a poppet. But I can’t really. Not at the moment.’

  Noah hopped a little, on one foot. He was getting the hang of this.

  He said, almost excitedly, ‘Ring Toby!’

  Lindsay laughed. She began to scramble up off her knees, clutching the flowers.

  ‘Why Toby?’

  Noah seized her free hand. An image came into his mind of Toby’s toy theatre, of his computer, of the exoticism of the ladder going up to his bed platform. He began to jump on the spot, pumping Lindsay’s hand.

  ‘Ring Toby! Ring Toby! Tell him we’re going to Legoland!’

  Lindsay looked down at his bobbing head.

  ‘Aren’t we lucky? Oh Noah, aren’t we just – lucky?’

  Paula lay on her sofa. It was tempting to lie face down and even bite one of her orange cushions, but she was not going to permit herself to do that. Lying down was enough, and she must lie face upwards, and breathe, and breathe, and tell herself that this was not the end of the world. It was not even necessarily the end of anything. Not if Jackson was to be believed. Not if she were to take, at face value and as meant, what Jackson had said, how Jackson had left her.

  She picked up one of the orange cushions and placed it on her chest, and held it there with both arms. It was strangely steadying, despite being only a cushion and not a body, and absurdly she felt a kind of gratitude to it, some connection, as if the cushion had mysterious capacities for reassurance in its feathered depths. She turned her head sideways and looked across the dusky space towards Toby’s ladder. His light was out: there was no sound. He was either asleep or wishing to be thought so. Whatever he had heard – what had he heard? – he was now either digesting or ignoring in his preferred way. If he had wanted to let her know how he was feeling, Paula knew, he would have done so, even if it just meant hurling clothes and football magazines off his platform on to the floor below. But he had hurled nothing and there was no sound.

  Paula raised her head an inch.

  ‘Toby?’

  Silence. Paula waited.

  She said again, slightly louder, ‘Toby? You OK?’

  No sound. Paula let her head fall back. She raised her left arm and looked at her watch. It was nine-fifteen. Jackson had been gone twenty minutes. She knew that because she had, for some reason, looked at the kitchen clock the moment the door had closed behind him, and then she had tipped the wine he hadn’t drunk into the sink, and the pizza he hadn’t eaten into the bin, and put the glass and the plate into the dishwasher, and banged the door shut, with finality. And then she had taken her own glass of wine and a tumbler of water, and put them down on the coffee table, and lain down on the sofa and stared upwards at the shadowy spaces of the ceiling, which could seem wonderful or rather awful, entirely depending upon one’s mood.

  She hadn’t really been expecting Jackson that evening. One of her most recent resolutions, with reference to Jackson, was to try not to notice whether she knew where he was or not, to try just to appreciate him when he was around, to try and see her own life as being as independently absorbing to her as his plainly was to him. These were noble aims, such resolutions, but implementing them she found took more will power than natural inclination. She had to rearrange her actions, her reactions, all the time, in order not to ask him – and not to respond badly when he told her – where he’d been, if he’d seen Karen again, why he wanted to see Blaise. It was hard work on a daily basis, and on days like today, when she seemed to have enough natural optimism to buffer her against persistent small anxieties, she felt not just relief, but a degree of self-congratulation. And so, when she had managed to persuade Toby to go to bed, and was standing in front of the fridge thinking that perhaps a supper of leftover cooked chicken, half a pot of guacamole and the remains of a tin of creamed sweetcorn had distinct appeal, it was a glorious reward for the rigours of emotional self-restraint for the doorbell to ring and Jackson to announce himself.

  He was carrying a pizza box, a bottle of wine and a single white rose in a long cellophane tube. He seemed cheerful, if a little breezy, and let his hand rest, in a pleasingly proprietorial way, on her bottom when he kissed her.

  ‘Toby’s in bed,’ Paula said.

  Jackson was opening a drawer in search of a corkscrew.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Had a good day?’

  ‘Fine,’ Jackson said, in the same tone of voice. Then he applied himself to taking the cork out of the wine bottle and, as he passed her, carrying the wine, on his way to the cupboard where the glasses were kept, he said casually, ‘You look good.’

  Paula felt the usual surrendering small leap of inward pleasure.

  ‘Thank you.’

  Jackson grunted. He took the wine and the glasses to the coffee table and sat down on the sofa, knees spread, leaning forward to pour. Paula followed him, with the pizza on a wooden board, and two plates. She sat down on the sofa, at a distance she judged unremarkable and not open to misinterpretation or pressure. She began, neatly, with a special roller cutter Toby had brought back from one of his afternoons with Gavin, to slice the pizza.

  ‘ To what,’ she said, looking steadily at the pizza, ‘do we owe this honour?’

  Jackson stopped pouring and looked at her.

  ‘Come again?’

  ‘I didn’t think you were coming. I didn’t know you were coming. It’s lovely to see you, but it’s a surprise.’

  Jackson turned back to the wine.

  ‘I wanted to make sure you were OK.’

  ‘OK?’

  ‘Yes,’ Jackson said. ‘After Gavin’s letter.’

  Paula levered out a wedge of pizza and put it on a plate.

  ‘You told me not to worry. So I haven’t.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘I mean,’ Paula said, ‘I’ve thought about it a lot, and when Gavin came to collect Toby last week, I just stayed in my bedroom till they’d gone. But I don’t feel frightened now.’

  Jackson turned and put a glass of wine in front of her and then he put a hand on her knee.

  ‘Good,’ he said again.

  Paula looked at his hand. It was, still, extremely disconcerting to react so strongly every time a particular person touched you, but there it was: she just did.

  She swallowed. She took a breath.

  ‘Jackson—’

  ‘Yup?’ He took his hand away.

  ‘Jackson, the letter did make me think—’

  He gave a little snort.

  ‘That you’re well out of that one.’

  ‘Well, yes. Yes, of course. But I’ve probably known that for some time. No, the letter made me think more about now. About my life. About – about the future.’

  Jackson leaned back into the sofa. He folded his arms. He looked very comfortable, very easy. He also looked – it was one of the things that made him exciting to Paula – as if there was a lot of contained energy in him, ticking quietly away there, until the time should come for him to use it.

  Paula found her hands were together in her lap, tightly twisted. She re
laxed them and pulled them apart and then clasped them again, deliberately loosely. She glanced at Jackson. She remembered the hand on her bottom, the single white rose, the hand on her knee. ‘I wanted to make sure you were OK,’ he’d said.

  ‘Gavin was angry,’ Paula said, and then she stopped. ‘I mean,’ she said, ‘that one of the things Gavin said he was angry about was you living here, you being a substitute father to Toby. Well, you aren’t, in either case. You don’t live here, do you? And you’ve taken Toby to one football game, haven’t you?’

  She paused.

  Jackson looked at her, almost serenely, and said, ‘There’ll be others.’

  ‘Other what?’

  ‘Other football games.’

  ‘Oh,’ Paula said.

  ‘He’ll get to go again,’ Jackson said. ‘Course he will. Don’t worry.’

  Paula relaxed her hands again.

  ‘I’m not worrying. I’m – I’m just thinking. I’m just thinking about – how things are, and – and how they might be. I’m just saying that you don’t live here now, that you don’t do much with Toby now, but – but, that you could.’

  ‘Could?’ he said.

  ‘Live here,’ Paula said. ‘Move on. Move in with me.’

  Jackson sighed. He unfolded his arms and leaned forward.

  He said, in a perfectly friendly voice, ‘Don’t do this.’

  ‘Don’t—’

  ‘Don’t ask this. Don’t try and make something happen that can’t.’

  ‘Why can’t it?’

  He half turned and put his hand back on her knee.

  ‘I don’t do this, babe. I don’t do this regular-guy stuff.’

  Paula, despite her best efforts, felt her voice rise uncontrollably.

  ‘Then why are you here? Why are you with me?’

  He squeezed her knee and let go.

  ‘You know why I’m with you. Would I be here now, otherwise?’

  ‘But we’ve got to move on,’ Paula cried. ‘We’ve been like this for months. Relationships don’t stay the same, they can’t, they can’t just go on being like they are at the beginning, they die.’

  Jackson said nothing. He looked disconcerted but not angry, not sad.

  Paula said in a fierce, half-tearful whisper, ‘I love you. I want to live with you. I want us to be a couple.’

  Jackson sighed again.

  He said, staring straight ahead, ‘This is together. For me. This is how I do together. I’ll go on doing this, but I can’t do more.’