Virtual Strangers

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Tonight though, as I dialled the surgery and asked for a home visit, I realised I’d reached some sort of maturity watershed, because that the fact that my father would not be back till the morning, made me feel, unaccountably, better, not worse.

  But crikey! (And then some.)

  What did I have forty minutes after this inspired realisation? Standing on my doorstep? Come to answer a call to attend my sick son? Not the taciturn Dr Spalding. Not the young Dr Pang. Not even a nameless and world weary locum. Oh no. What the halogen had brought into being was Griffith. Was Adam. Was Dr Adam G Jones.

  My maturity watershed collapsing around me, I stood there and gawped at him, fifteen again.

  I should have known, of course, shouldn’t I? Because they didn’t come to the Barn Dance. And when I rang the surgery, there should have been some part of me - some rational, functioning part, that said to itself, ah! Adam must be working! And wouldn’t it be funny if he turned up here now? And yet the thought, despite the plethora of Adam thoughts already jostling and crowding it, never crossed my mind for the tiniest instant. Which in some ways was a blessing. Had it done so I might have been tempted to abandon the surgery and take my chances with the no doubt over-stretched casualty department instead.

  I couldn’t, at first, take in that it was actually him on the doorstep, blinking, as I was, against the glare of my overstated uPVC white-out of a porch. The short walk from the car had crowned him with a cotton wool head dress and he was wearing not the familiar jeans, but a suit.

  ‘Oh!’ I said. ‘Adam!’ I’d nearly said Griffith.

  ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Yes. Do I get to come in?’

  A tattoo started up in my chest then and there, and as I ushered him past my massed ranks of glittering white branches, my temple joined in with a beat of its own. What to do? How to play this? I tried a smile, which he didn’t return. He looked very stern.

  ‘Righty-ho,’ he said, clearing his throat. ‘Where’s the invalid?’

  I pointed upstairs and then followed him up. He had pearlescent glitter all over his jacket, and a tidemark of snow around the toes of his brogues. I mumbled the asthma attack’s natural history and hoped my tremulous larynx wouldn’t give me away. We entered Ben’s room.

  ‘That’s lovely,’ said Adam, sounding not in the least like himself. Then, ‘Hello, Ben. Thank you, Charlie.’ All in one practised utterence. I was, I realised with relief, being dismissed.

  Back in the kitchen while Adam attended to Ben, I flapped about in an agony of pinging nerve endings, surging hormones, and an alarming countercurrent heat exchange in my face. I then realised (with a sudden, and thus worrisome, excitement) that a similar rush of unwelcome proximity-related chemicals must also, must also, be ensuing for him. Except he had had thirty or so minutes to prepare himself, having been the GP to have accepted the call.

  The kettle boiled just as he came back into the kitchen.

  ‘Nothing to worry about,’ he said, stuffing his hands in his jacket pockets and not looking at me. ‘I put him on the nebuliser, and he’s much better now. He’ll be asleep soon I expect, so if you want to, I don’t know, tuck him in or whatever -’

  ‘I’ll just go up then, ‘ I said. ‘Would you, er - I mean, if you have time, of course, perhaps you’d like to -’

  Complete paralysis of sentence-finishing neuronal pathway. Rats.

  I flapped my hand about in the general direction of the kettle. He nodded.

  ‘Er. Great. Yes. Yes, please. I could kill for a coffee.’

  ‘Great,’ I echoed. Stupidly. With the cringy addition of an inane tinkling laugh. ‘I’ll just -’

  He smiled a little then. Shrugged. Took one hand out of his pocket. Moved it across a chair back. Pulled an earlobe. Put a - Oh God. Stop it, Charlotte! ‘Shall I get on and -’ He gestured. I nodded. Laughed again.

  Bloody hell.

  ‘Yes. Absolutely. It’s that cupboard. Fridge here and spoons there and - well. I won’t be a moment.’

  I bolted up the stairs to find that Ben was already asleep, his chest rising and falling with a reassuringly relaxed height and tempo. I perched on the edge of the bed and tried to still my own ridiculous pulse. Outside, the snow was falling in fluffy fifty-pence discs, tinged orange by the warm sodium glow in the street. Adam’s car was parked not on the road, but beside mine on our drive, which lent a poignancy to the reason he was actually here.

  The fact of our solitude resonating all around me, I counted out the twenty two steps that took my feet back downstairs. Adam had gone into to the living room, and was standing in the middle of it, holding the coffees. He had dispensed them into a pair of horrible chipped mugs. The most horrible mugs in my entire mug dynasty. Typical. He turned as I entered.

  ‘Just admiring your tree.’

  ‘Oh. Thank you. It’s a bit of a thing with me, the tree. All the sparkle. All the frippery. That’s me. That’s what I’m best at. All very insignificant and boring. Ha, ha. Though I don’t admit to actually making my own stuffing.’

  (Why not? What was wrong with making your own stuffing? Davina probably made two types of stuffing to ram up her festive bird’s acquiescent bum.)

  I heard myself embellish this rubbish with yet another self conscious titter. I couldn’t seem to think of anything else to add. All those emails. All that easy, comfortable talk about nothing. And now I had nothing whatsoever to say.

  ‘I know,’ he said, handing me my coffee and smiling properly at last. ‘You told me all about it.’

  So I had. At length. Ad nauseum. Drunkenly.

  ‘And you shouldn’t knock yourself,’ he went on. ‘You have a real talent for it. The room looks beautiful.’

  I wanted to tell him that I wasn’t knocking myself; that I thought tree decorating to be a fine and noble calling, and that my attempts at being self effacing were simply the nervous ramblings of a woman completely fazed by the awesome possibilities inherent in her predicament. But I didn’t. Instead I gestured to the sofa, which he obediently sat on.

  ‘We don’t make much of an effort at home, as you’d imagine. No kids to do it for, so we tend not to bother. And what with work and so on -’ He shrugged and settled himself back against the cushions. His tie matched the upholstery perfectly. (The ‘we’, however, clashed dreadfully).

  I perched at the other end, clutching the chipped bit of my mug.

  ‘Of course. You’re both very busy, I’ll bet. Three hundred lights,’ I twittered, clinging on hopefully to the last vestiges of the topic, in case a more unsettling one should jump up and bite us. He made a face of approval. ‘And those stars?’ I pointed. ‘They’re new this year. I made them from preserved birch twigs. I’m particularly proud of them. Even if I have added a silver burnish to the kitchen table. Ha, ha.’

  He smiled and nodded gravely, as if all this bilge was of desperate importance. As if my sad dalliance with glycerine related floristry was of the least interest to a man who made life and death decisions on bank holiday evenings and carried a morphine vial around in his bag. Twit, twit, twit.

  ‘Didn’t know you had so many hidden talents,’ he observed.

  ‘Oh, none hidden, I assure you. This is it. The full range.’

  He raised one eyebrow and then stood up again, filling the room. ‘But no shell boxes on display, which is a little disappointing.’

  He put his face in his coffee as he said this, so I couldn’t quite catch his expression. And I hoped he’d keep it there a while, because a slow, warm, inexorable flush had found it’s way out of the top of my (checked - yuk!) shirt and arranged itself tastefully over my cheeks. I waved my arms around as a diversion.

  ‘Oh, I’m crap at those. But if you want one, I do know someone in Tenby.’

  His next utterance, which began, ‘Charlie -’ was partly drowned out by my explosive guffaws, which were becoming more alarming by the moment.

  So he said it again. ‘Charlie -’ On a rising note. Oh no.

  ‘But he hasn’t got a bucke
t,’ I interrupted, avoiding his eye.

  He sat again. About half way up the sofa, this time. And turned back towards me in a way that made it absolutely clear that this was no laughing matter. And certainly not an occasion for tittering or guffawing, and that he wanted me not to avoid his gaze but to make a connection with it, and that he wasn’t going to be deflected by any amount of diversionary banter. I looked at him properly. Took in each perfect contour. And found myself quite unable, then, to look away.

  ‘This is all a little difficult, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘You’re telling me!’ I exclaimed, exhaling ten minutes worth of backed up gulps and swallows. ‘You are telling me! I have to be the most embarrassed person I know right now. Which is why I’m not sure we should even be having this conversation. I’m finding it a little difficult to - oh, I don’t know. It’s -’

  ‘The word ‘strained’ springs to mind.’

  The eyes held fast, then he dropped his and sighed.

  ‘Yes, doesn’t it? ‘ I agreed. ‘Which is so silly. Because actually there’s no earthy reason why we should feel -’

  ‘Yes there is.’

  Just like that. Yes there is.

  ‘Not really,’ I said. ‘It’s not as if -’

  ‘Charlie, you know there is.’ He stopped. Then said. ‘That’s assuming I haven’t entirely misread things from your end. In which case -’ And then he ground to a halt again. Which was so exasperating. I couldn’t be doing with all this huff puff stop start stuff. It was making me feel twitchy. But while I was chewing all this over, he chipped in with, ‘Have I?’

  To which I could have answered, ‘well of course you have! You didn’t think - well, goodness me! Heavens! What on earth gave you the impression I was interested in you!’ etc., but he knew very well that it was a load of compete tosh. I had my shag list to thank for that. I told him so. I said,

  ‘I can hardly deny what’s on a list in black and white on your hard drive, can I?’

  Which sounded, I thought, impressively technical. For me, at least.

  ‘All deleted,’ he said. ‘And quite beside the point.’

  Ah.

  ‘How d’you mean?’ I asked, hoping to deflect the conversation down a more hypothetical avenue.

  ‘What I mean is that I can hardly deny that if I had a shag list then Gwyneth Paltrow would probably be on it, and that up till a few months back, she’d have been higher up it than you. Which is why your shag list is beside the point, and what’s

  been -’ he made a circling motion with his hand - he seemed big on visual euphemisms. ‘What’s been going on since then is very much more to the point. And what I’m asking is... well, have I misread where we’ve been going since then?’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. ‘Can I have a half hour to deconstruct that, please?’

  ‘You don’t need to deconstruct it, Charlie. You know very well what I’m saying.’

  I put my mug down on the carpet beside me, then regretted it. Without something to hold on to my hands seemed to have developed a life of their own. I shoved them underneath my knees, where they busied themselves with picking at the stitching on the piping cord.

  ‘You know I know,’ I said finally. ‘Of course you know I know. We both know the other one knows. And we know it’s the same for both of us, don’t we? All those ‘obviously’s -’

  He looked confused.

  ‘You know,’ I said. ‘All that business about Rhys. God,’ I groaned. ‘And that drunken email. ’

  ‘So I’m not wrong.’ The corners of his mouth twitched. ‘I’m not entirely sure what you’re on about, but I think I’ve understood that much correctly.’

  I sighed. ‘You have to understand I’ve had a couple of glasses of wine, a particularly fraught evening and, well, basically, this is all a bit difficult. You know?’

  ‘I know,’ he repeated gravely. Then laughed. A big laugh. A laugh that meant business. A laugh that in different circumstances could be endorsed by one of my own. A laugh that was full of warmth and affection. The same laugh I’d imagined he laughed when he read some of the rubbish I put in my emails. And then he stopped laughing. Abruptly. Which, in these particular circumstances, I supposed, was all he could properly do.

  ‘And my fault,’ he said.

  I picked up my mug and shook my head.

  ‘It’s not a question of fault,’ I said.

  He stood up again, and walked across to the tree. Beyond it the snowflakes outside continued to spin and dance. I wondered how he was going to manage the rest of his calls. Assuming more came, that was.

  ‘Oh, but it is. And it’s mine. Christ!’ He peered out into the night. ‘What was I thinking of? I’m a married man, for God’s sake!. What possessed me?’

  I couldn’t answer that, so I didn’t. ‘It’s not really important now, is it?’ I tried instead.

  ‘It was that shag list of yours,’ he said, still on the track of his own internal dialogue. ‘It just cracked me up. I didn’t realise women did that kind of thing. Do women do that kind of thing? Or is it just you?’

  He seemed to really want to know. He turned round and raised his eyebrows at me.

  ‘Haven’t a clue,’ I said honestly. ‘I’ve never really thought about it. Some women, I guess. But not in the way I think you think we do. It’s just something we talk about over a few glasses of wine sometimes. We don’t write it out and distribute it like a local newsletter or something. You only saw it because of Rose moving away and the whole email business. But it’s just a bit of fun. I imagine, in time, we would have become bored with it. It’s not the same when you’re not together. Anyway, it’s so unimportant. It means nothing really.’

  ‘But it doesn’t. It hasn’t. It’s meant all this! When I first read it and saw my name, yes, it amused me. Nothing more. And I thought it would be amusing, I suppose, to email you back . But then - well, you can imagine, can’t you? It played on my mind. I - well, you know -’ he gestured. At what? My hair? The shape of my eyebrows? Then shook his head. ‘Heck - fancied you. But I don’t think,’ he went on, ‘that it had ever really occurred to me that you might fancy me. You’ve never flirted with me. Never even danced with me at a party, as far as I can remember. Have you?’ He raised a hand. ‘You don’t even have to answer. I know unequivocally that you haven’t. I’ve spent a ridiculous amount of time just trying to recall an encounter when the fact of you fancying me has ever even registered. And it hasn’t. Which is why it was all so intriguing. I mean, yes, sure, lots of people flirt. Most people, in fact. It’s what men and women do. All enjoyable, harmless stuff. But you haven’t. Not with me, at any rate. I’ve known you for how long? Four years? Five?’

  I nodded. Gulped. ‘About that, I suppose.’ Four years, seven months. Exactly. Exactly. Three weeks after starting at Willie Jones Jackson. Since a Stableford barbecue party, in fact.

  ‘And you never flirted with me. Not once. So how come -’

  ‘Because you don’t. Not when you’re on your own. Not unless you -’ now it was my turn to circle my hand euphemistically. I regrouped. ‘Not unless you hope to develop a relationship with someone. Not that I was in a hurry to get involved with anyone after Felix - I’d just ended a marriage, after all, but can you imagine how popular I’d be if I started chatting up all my friends’ husbands? So you tend not to. Well, I tend not to. Not with men who are married. Not with men who are involved.’

  He gazed for a moment into the twinkling depths of the tree, then freed the string from a bauble that had caught in some needles.

  ‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘I suppose that makes sense. In any event, it felt a little like I’d been told, oh, I don’t know, that oh, Madonna or someone had told a mutual friend she fancied me -’

  ‘Madonna!’

  ‘Yes, well. Okay, maybe not Madonna. Though - Well, you know what I mean. That someone I thought barely registered my existence was all the time registering it a very great deal. You can’t help but think about it.’

  I
found myself smiling now. ‘I don’t know about the “very great deal” bit. Registering it amongst others,’ I pointed out. ‘It wasn’t as if I had a little shrine to you in my bathroom cabinet -’

  He looked bashful. ‘Fair enough, yes, yes. And I know I probably went up and down the charts a fair bit, but the point is I couldn’t help but have it on my mind after that. Any time I saw you, I was seeing you differently. Quite apart from the fact that you were upset and everything, I couldn’t help wondering what you were thinking about me. And you were with Phil still then, of course, which made it all the more -’ He stopped and looked out of the patio doors again.

  ‘All the more what?’

  He came back and sat down on the sofa beside me, the empty mug swinging from the crook of his thumb.

  ‘All the more erotic, basically.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Oh!

  ‘All the more exciting. You wouldn’t believe how many times I’ve -’

  He stopped his sentence there. I wondered how he’d been going to finish it. With ‘wondered what it would be like to have sex with you’ maybe? Or ‘imagined bundling you into a cupboard? Or onto an earthquake simulator even?’ It didn’t matter. I knew exactly what he meant.

  So I nodded. ‘It all became rather compulsive, didn’t it?’

  ‘Has become,’ he said, rolling the mug between his palms. It was distracting and I wanted to reach out and take it from him, but was frightened to touch him in case my fingers got spot-welded to his. It really felt as if they might.

  ‘Is,’ he went on. ‘The compulsion is still very much there.’

  ‘Well,’ I said, digesting this. ‘I’ve actually been horrified. Since I worked out it was you, I’ve been horrified more or less constantly. Horrified about all the things I said to you when I thought I was talking to Rose. Horrified about all the things I said when I thought you were simply a stranger. But most of all, horrified since the moment when I found out who you were, that the day would almost certainly come when we’d be having a conversation exactly like this. Which is bad news all round.’