Friday Nights

by Joanna Trollope

  He had thought, when he heard Paula on the telephone, that she was talking to Lindsay. He would rather have liked her to have been talking to Lindsay, which might, in turn, have enabled him to indicate something of the swimming pool to Noah. But it became apparent, quite quickly, that Paula was not talking to Lindsay, she was talking to Jackson, and then, when he was right outside the door and openly listening, that she was talking to Jackson’s answering machine.

  She did not sound angry, talking to a machine. She did not sound, even, and although he’d heard her crying recently quite a lot, as if she wanted to cry. She just said, in a flat kind of voice, that she had decided that where they’d got to (what?) wasn’t where she wanted to be and it wasn’t making her happy, in fact it was making her anxious and strung out, and that she understood that he couldn’t change, wouldn’t change, and so really she had decided to break off everything after this call and that’s why she was ringing and he should know that she was miserable and that she loved him. And then – by then, Toby was in the doorway, watching her bent back as she sat on the edge of the bed – she stopped talking, and just held the phone for a bit, and then she clicked it off and chucked it towards the pillows, and got up and put her hands on the windowsill and stood there, looking out.

  Toby waited. He waited for what seemed to him like hours and hours, watching the digital-radio clock by the bed click from one oblong green number to the next. Occasionally he looked at Paula’s phone, lying in a little dent it had made when it fell on the pillow. The sight of it filled him with relief and, at the same time, anxiety and disappointment. He also felt, disturbingly but excitingly, a growing sense of anger. He was aware, very keenly, who he was angry with, he just wasn’t going to name him. As Fiona had said, if you didn’t name things, you didn’t have to acknowledge that they were real. Well, up to a point, anyway, and that point would do fine for Toby just now.

  He picked a small flake of white paint off the door jamb, and inspected it closely. Then he flicked it to the floor and trod on it.

  He said to Paula’s back, his eyes still on the floor, in a clumsy rush, ‘There’s still me.’

  Chapter Nineteen

  Blaise went up the stairs to Workwell’s office, carrying her laptop, her briefcase, and a plastic carrier bag containing a bottle of white wine that had spent five minutes in the rapid chiller at the supermarket. In her briefcase were her notes on the day’s meetings – three satisfactory, out of five – and an estate agent’s valuation on her house. That, too, was satisfactory. In fact, very satisfactory. There was something enormously contenting about seeing the manifestation of five years’ effort and earning in something as incontrovertibly solid as a house. Perhaps that explained the British passion for house-ownership. Perhaps possessing a house was the modern equivalent of a bound chest full of medieval gold. And why gold, in the first place? Who was it who had decided that gold was so significant?

  Karen, not in a tracksuit, was, as usual, at her computer. There were papers on the surfaces around her and papers strewn on the floor and two drawers of the tall filing cabinet were half open. Blaise stepped into the room, put down her briefcase, and slid both drawers shut with a bang.

  Karen didn’t look round.

  She said, ‘I was in the middle of filing.’

  ‘So I see.’

  Karen made an embracing gesture with both arms towards the scattered papers.

  ‘This is all filing.’

  Blaise took the bottle out of its bag, and reached on to a shelf for a stack of disposable tumblers.

  ‘You shouldn’t be doing this.’

  There was a tiny pause, and then Karen turned round.

  ‘Shouldn’t be doing what?’

  ‘Filing.’

  ‘Excuse me, but I have always done the filing. Maybe you haven’t noticed, flashing about here and there in your business suit. But it’s been going on, day in, day out, for five years and in any case if I don’t, who will? Hardly you—’

  Blaise unscrewed the wine-bottle cap.

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘hardly me.’

  Karen looked at the wine.

  ‘What’s that for?’

  ‘Drinking.’

  Karen stood up. She was wearing black trousers and a cherry-red polo-necked sweater and her hair was held up haphazardly in a red plastic clip.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Blaise poured wine into two plastic glasses and held one out.

  ‘I’ve got something to tell you.’

  Karen took the glass and stepped back to lean against the desk edge.

  She said, ‘Are you going to complete my humiliation by telling me you think Jackson would seriously make a useful business partner?’

  Blaise looked at her. Then she sat down in the chair nearest to her and took a swallow of wine.

  ‘No,’ Blaise said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Weren’t you tempted?’

  Blaise looked at her.

  ‘Not by him.’

  ‘And not,’ Karen said boldly, ‘by Lucas?’

  Blaise looked away.

  She said, ‘I always thought, if I ever were to marry, that one of the kindest things I could do for my husband was not to tell him absolutely everything.’

  ‘OK, Miss Perfect,’ Karen said, ‘but we don’t work like that, Lucas and me.’

  Blaise transferred her gaze to Karen’s face.

  She said with some emphasis, ‘No, I was not tempted.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really.’

  ‘Lucas is very attractive—’

  ‘Kay,’ Blaise said, ‘don’t bait me. Don’t take your state of mind out on me.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Karen said defiantly.

  Blaise said nothing. She looked at the wine in her tumbler.

  After a pause she said, ‘I said you shouldn’t be filing because you are too able to be doing the filing.’

  ‘I’ve done it for five years,’ Karen said again.

  ‘I know. Brilliantly. You have run the business brilliantly.’

  Karen put her tumbler down. She leaned forward.

  ‘What do you want to tell me?’

  Blaise bent down and retrieved her briefcase from the floor. She balanced it on her knee, and extracted a slim sheaf of papers in a plastic wallet. There was a photograph on the top sheet, visible through the wallet. She held it out to Karen.

  Karen looked at the photograph.

  ‘That’s your house!’

  ‘Yes,’ Blaise said. ‘I’ve had an agent round. I’ve had it valued. It’s worth a lot.’

  Karen was still looking at the photograph in her hand.

  She said slightly abstractedly, ‘You’re selling your house, you’re putting your house on the market—’

  ‘Yes,’ Blaise said.

  Karen threw the plastic folder on to the floor.

  She said a little wildly, ‘But what about me?’

  Blaise stretched out and picked up Karen’s wine and held it out to her.

  ‘That’s why I’m telling you.’

  ‘But what—’

  ‘I’m telling you I’m selling up,’ Blaise said, ‘because it’ll help you. It’ll help you to make up your mind.’ ‘How can that help?’ Karen said. ‘How can you destabilizing everything possibly help?’ Blaise looked at the folder on the floor. ‘Think,’ she said. ‘Just think.’

  ‘I don’t wish to seem sarcastic,’ Eleanor said, ‘but I had almost forgotten what you looked like.’

  Karen was leaning against the tall cupboard in which Eleanor kept her broom and the ironing board. She had her hair on her shoulders and she was wearing a skirt. Eleanor wasn’t sure she had ever seen Karen’s legs before, in all the years they had known one another. They were, Eleanor thought, rather good legs. She waved a hand, holding a teaspoon.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’

  Karen detached herself from the cupboard and sank into the nearest chair. She picked up a
paperclip lying on the table among the papers and cereal boxes and jars of this and that, and fiddled with it.

  ‘Where are the girls?’ Eleanor said.

  ‘At school—’

  ‘Usually,’ Eleanor said in the deliberate tone of voice her former colleagues would have labelled ‘pleasant’, ‘when the girls are at school, you are at work.’

  ‘Not today,’ Karen said. She pulled one side of the paperclip open and regarded the wire prong she had made.

  She said without looking at Eleanor, ‘How are you?’

  ‘Well,’ Eleanor said. ‘As the Australians would say, I’m good.’

  ‘Living with Jules—’

  ‘Strangely successful.’

  ‘You look well.’

  ‘So, I believe,’ Eleanor said, ‘does she.’

  Karen leaned forward and punched a periodical cover neatly with the wire prong, in a pattern of tiny holes.

  ‘I haven’t seen her.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I haven’t seen her, or Paula, or Lindsay, or anyone. Not for ages.’

  ‘Tea?’ Eleanor said. ‘Coffee? Jules drinks more tea than you would believe possible. And she has become rather arcane about it and wants to make it with loose tea, in a pot.’

  Karen dropped the paperclip and folded her hands firmly together, as if to keep them still.

  ‘Coffee, please.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Eleanor said, ‘a stage of life becomes almost obsessively preoccupying. In itself.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’

  Eleanor turned round, holding a packet of coffee in the hand that wasn’t holding the teaspoon.

  ‘In response to your saying that you hadn’t managed to see any of your friends recently.’

  Karen said quickly, ‘I’ve just been so busy—’

  Eleanor spooned coffee, tiny spoonful after spoonful, into an earthenware jug.

  She said, ‘You all are.’

  ‘Sometimes,’ Karen said, staring at her hands, ‘being busy means you don’t have to think too much. You don’t have to decide things.’

  ‘Certainly.’

  ‘I wanted to see you,’ Karen said with force. ‘I wanted to talk to you—’

  Eleanor poured boiling water into the jug and began to stir it in a leisurely manner with a carving fork.

  ‘Here I am.’

  ‘Blaise—’ Karen said, and stopped.

  Eleanor laid the fork on the counter and brought the jug over to the table. She set it down on the nearest pile of newspapers.

  ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘Blaise. And Lucas. And the mysterious Jackson. Open the drawer next to you, would you, and find a strainer.’

  Karen rocked back in her chair in order to pull out a shallow drawer in the table in front of her. Its contents reminded her of her childhood, a comfortingly old-fashioned jumble of pickle forks and primitive can-openers and the reddish rubber rings for Kilner jars. She extracted a small dented tea strainer, and held it out.

  ‘That do?’

  ‘The very thing.’

  ‘You know – about Jackson, about—’

  Eleanor limped back to the kitchen counter and unhooked two mugs from hooks on the wall.

  ‘I know enough.’

  ‘I expect you think we’re all pathetic, me and Paula especially—’

  Eleanor came back and lowered herself carefully into a chair.

  She said, ‘He’s very personable. And very enigmatic. A powerful combination.’

  ‘And a liar.’

  ‘No,’ Eleanor said, ‘not really. An encourager of illusion, possibly. But not a liar in the sense of being a pathological fraudster. But certainly—’ She stopped.

  ‘Certainly what?’

  ‘Certainly a catalyst.’

  ‘Oh, thank you—’

  Eleanor began pouring coffee through the strainer into mugs.

  ‘And maybe what you all needed.’

  Karen watched the coffee grounds building up in the strainer.

  ‘D’you need a plate?’

  ‘Please.’

  Karen got up and retrieved a plate from the rack by the sink. She put it down near the jug and waited while Eleanor tapped the contents of the strainer on to it. Some of the grounds sprayed on to the papers near by. Eleanor took no notice.

  Karen said, ‘You know he wanted to buy into Workwell—’

  ‘I know he suggested it.’

  ‘And now—’

  Eleanor stopped pouring.

  ‘Now what?’

  Karen looked suddenly distraught.

  She said in a rush, ‘Now Blaise is selling her house in order to buy me out, and move on herself in some new arrangement with one of our clients.’

  ‘A h.’

  ‘What’s ah?’

  ‘I thought that might happen,’ Eleanor said. She pushed one coffee mug towards Karen.

  Karen gazed at her. She looked as if she might cry.

  ‘What am I supposed to do?’

  ‘Do?’

  ‘Yes,’ Karen said. ‘There’s me to consider. Can you imagine what it’s like, after everything else, just to be summarily dumped, by your business partner?’

  Eleanor indicated the end of the table.

  ‘The milk is there somewhere. Maybe behind the cornflakes.’

  Karen moved the cereal box and found a carton of milk.

  She said angrily, ‘She said it would set me free.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And Lucas thinks it’s wonderful and wants to sell our house too and move out of London and start again with a completely different kind of life.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He says if I don’t go on working, he’ll strangle me. But I can’t. I can’t go on in all this confusion and exhaustion and having no initiative because everyone’s snatched it from me. I was managing, Eleanor, I really was. Six months ago, I was tired but I knew where I was, I could control things. I know I told Blaise I didn’t want us to expand, but that was just while I caught my breath. I didn’t mean never expand, I just meant give me a break, just for a few years. And now this. Luke sells a painting, one painting, and thinks everything’ll be solved, and different, and Blaise offers me all this money and tells me, slam, bang, thank you, ma’am, that our partnership is over and that she is doing me a bloody favour.’

  Eleanor poured milk into her coffee.

  She said, ‘He’s right.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lucas is right. About you working.’

  ‘I was working. I’ve always worked. I was working fine.’

  ‘Possibly,’ Eleanor said, ‘possibly. But you weren’t stretched.’

  ‘I was,’ Karen said, ‘I was. I was stretched almost to breaking point—’

  Eleanor took a sip of coffee and made a face.

  ‘Not a success—’

  ‘I couldn’t have been stretched further—’

  ‘Administratively no, probably not. But you weren’t using all your capabilities.’

  ‘Lucas thinks that. Blaise said that.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  ‘Eleanor, I feel like the washing in the drum. On the spin cycle.’

  Eleanor pushed her mug away, and folded her arms on the table.

  ‘This business of work—’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘For us women,’ Eleanor said, ‘it has always seemed to me to fulfil two functions. It can enable us to become our most genuine and complete selves – as men know perfectly well – and it can protect us from the fickleness of fortune. The latter appears to me especially important if you have children.’

  ‘I’m hardly economically dependent.’

  Eleanor glanced up.

  She said sharply, ‘How about bringing those little girls up on your own?’

  Karen said nothing. She picked up her mug and took a long swallow of coffee seemingly without noticing its taste.

  She said unsteadily, ‘I don’t think – Lucas would leave me—’

  ‘He might die,’ Eleanor said.
<
br />   ‘Don’t say that!’

  Eleanor stretched out one hand and gripped Karen’s nearest arm.

  ‘Well, think.’

  ‘People keep saying that—’

  ‘Karen,’ Eleanor said, ‘why should this not be the chance to improve your life in many ways?’

  Karen turned to look at her, eyes wide.

  ‘You want us to leave?’

  Eleanor took her hand away.

  ‘Don’t be childish.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘I want you to see,’ Eleanor said vehemently, ‘that if you can’t seize the chance to make yourself independent nobody can seize it for you.’

  ‘I was independent, working with Blaise—’

  ‘Were you?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘Then why did you drag your heels? Why didn’t you want the company to grow?’

  Karen muttered something.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I said,’ Karen said tiredly, ‘I said OK.’

  ‘It seems to me,’ Eleanor said, ‘you can either start something else on your own and view it as an exciting challenge and not merely as a meal ticket, or you can work for someone else and devote all your energies to the job rather than running the job.’

  Karen picked up her mug again.

  ‘Don’t drink it,’ Eleanor said, ‘it’s filthy. It’s just as well that the modern cult of fulfilment through domesticity was never an option for me.’

  Karen put her mug down. She put her own hand out and took Eleanor’s.

  She said, ‘Would you have liked it to be?’

  Eleanor gave her hand a squeeze and withdrew her own. She shook her head.

  ‘No, my dear.’

  ‘But now—’

  ‘Now is different.’

  ‘And it suits you, with Jules—’