by Carol Mason
On Saturday morning, Mike comes to pick up Aimee. ‘How was London?’ he asks again as though he never asked me on the phone. He is practically giving me a facial peel with his gaze.
‘It was fine.’
‘Conference good?’
I forgot I’d told him I was going to a conference. I nod. ‘For conferences.’
His gaze travels down the fitted bodice of my Primark denim dress. ‘What’s new in the dating business then?’ When I cast him a look he says, ‘Sorry. Just trying to be sociable.’
‘How was your date last night?’ I ask him.
He studies me too closely for comfort, his gaze sweeping around my face like the second hand of a clock. ‘I like her. She’s a very nice person, isn’t she? A pretty woman too.’
Aimee comes downstairs in her new platform wedges, and gives her dad a kiss. ‘Have fun,’ I tell them both, and watch them walking down the garden path, getting a flashback to Saturdays of old. Our days out. Us clothes shopping while Mike stood soldierly outside of stores. Aimee prancing around at home in her new purchases, her girlish attempts to act vampish, singing along to Maria Carey, about dream lovers coming back to her. Summer days at the beach; Aimee drawing, me running, and Mike resting on an elbow on the sand, watching us.
When I close the door, I don’t feel as peppy as I did before he knocked and I wonder why his questions about London got to me.
I am barely back indoors when I hear the ping of my email. I click on and see it’s from Jennifer. Immaculate timing.
‘I really like Mike!’ she writes.
~ * * * ~
Patrick and I drive to Swallowship Woods. We lean over the bridge to watch the Tyne river jump and froth over the rock bed. Patrick marvels at the tall redwood trees, and the occasional kingfisher and speckled thrush that hops across our path. After that we drive to the coast, and I take him to a place where they serve the best Holy Island mussels I’ve ever tasted. Before it starts to rain, we manage an hour’s walk along the virtually unchartered expanse of buttermilk sand that makes up a portion of the region’s thirty-nine miles of coastline designated an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. I tell him some of the local history, about Grace Darling the girl with the windswept hair who lived in lighthouses and braved her life to rescue shipwrecked men.
‘Do we have time?’ he asks me when we get back to the house, nodding upstairs.
We make time.
After a leisurely love-making session, and while he sleeps, I go back downstairs and see it’s nearly three o’clock. I check on the chicken I am cooking in my slow pot, for dinner, and pull out some vegetables to prepare from the drawer in the fridge. I am just putting the kettle on when I hear the front door. By the time I walk down our passageway, my dad is just walking in. I had forgotten to lock it. His eyes go straight to my dressing gown.
‘Aren’t you well?’
‘Dad? What are you doing here?’
‘Visiting. I thought I’d come and see my daughter and granddaughter.’
‘Aimee is with Mike. But I thought Saturday afternoon was your life drawing class?’
‘Not any more,’ he runs a hand through his plentiful snow-white hair. ‘If you must know, I was asked to leave.’ He pulls out a chair and sits down. His face, with his new upper teeth, looks fuller, younger somehow.
‘Leave?’ From his breast pocket, he takes out a hankie and blows his nose. ‘Why were you asked to leave, Anthony?’
‘If you must know… For making the models feel uncomfortable.’
I gawp at him. ‘You got kicked out of the life drawing class?’
He sighs. ‘The trouble with England is that everybody’s too uptight. Women are afraid to show their sensuality, and men are afraid to be throbbing male beings. This sort of thing would never happen in France or Italy. A harmless comment about a woman’s body.’ He takes out the same hankie that he blew his nose in, and wipes it across his brow. ‘Teesh!’
‘But we’re not in France or Italy!’
He throws up his hands. ‘Well, what can I say? More fool us.’
I scrutinise him. ‘So what did you say? To the models? To warrant being thrown out?’
‘Mo-del. And it was nothing. I commented on a particular part of her anatomy, that’s all.’
I hide my face in my hands and peek at him through fingers. ‘Which part?’
He pulls out a piece of paper. It’s a drawing of a small-breasted woman’s narrow-hipped body. Between the V at the top of her legs is a wild and wiry crotch.
‘It was positively forest-like. I’ve never seen one like it before. It almost looked like it might be inhabited. I worried that if I got too close I’d be attacked by a band of pygmies.’ He smiles to himself. ‘But then the idea became quite appealing.’
‘Anthony!’ I shove his drawing at him. ‘You’re leaving. Right now.’
As I’m helping him to the door he sniffs the air: ‘Something smells good. Are you sure I can’t stay for dinner?’
But it’s too late. Just as I’m bundling him outside, I look up the stairs. There, at the top, looking mildly awkward, and as though he’s just woken up, is Patrick.
‘Hi,’ he says.
Twenty-Six
Patrick spends the night. I get my father to promise not to say a word to anyone about him being here.
I am now asleep on Patrick’s chest and hear someone ringing the doorbell like a maniac.
I stumble, fat-eyed with sleep, towards the noise. Opening the door I find Jacqui in a red dress, bobbing up and down like a person in dire need of the toilet.
‘Let me in!’ She barrels past me into the house.
I follow her into my kitchen where she turns around and looks at me. She is as white as a ghost.
‘What’s happened?’
She buries her face in her hands, and starts mumbling. Then she looks at me again. ‘It was awful… So we were all having ‘going away’ drinks, you know, because Cyril is moving to the Frankfurt office… I had about three glasses of champagne, so did he, and the whole time, from me walking into that boardroom, he never once took his eyes off me.’
‘Cyril?’
She tuts. ‘Not Cyril! Christian! Who else would I be talking about? Celine it was so unbelievably charged. It was total hard-core flirting.’ She shakes her head, snivels, sits down opposite me at the kitchen table. ‘Anyway, I went out to the toilet at one point and he watched me walk out of the room, and I was sure he was going to follow. My heart was hammering in the loo. I was so sure he was going to walk in and something was going to happen right there… Anyway,’ she snivels again, ‘he didn’t follow me in. So when I came out, I go back into the boardroom where everyone is, and he’s disappeared!’
She wipes under her eyes, where her mascara is running. ‘I got another glass of champers and I went on a little walkabout. So I go down the corridor that leads to his office, and his door’s open, and his little desk light is on... There was no one around, so I walked in.’ She hides her face in her hands again and squeals. ‘He was sitting at his desk. Not really doing anything. Just sitting there, like he was thinking. So he looked up. I closed his door, threw myself up against it, fixed him with my most vixen-like look, and said… Come and get me.’
A tiny laugh bursts out of me. ‘God! You said Come and get me? What did he do?’
‘Well that’s the thing, he just looked at me, and said in a very firm, un-amused voice, “please open my door.”
Her eyes glass over with tears. She stares, vacantly, as though picturing it all again. ‘He was looking at me as though I was some sort of contemptible person.’ I feel so sorry for her. She is gorgeous tonight. Her hair in a wavy bob, her bright red lipstick matching her dress that shows off her Nigella Lawson-like curves. My sister doesn’t do mad things like this. She never made a fool of herself over a lad when we were growing up. She was always too wise and smart. I hate him.
‘Then he just got up, and said, “please step aside” and he opened his door himself.’ She
scowls, shakes her head. ‘I was mortified, Celine. I wanted to die right there.’
‘Please step aside?’ I repeat. ‘Oh, what a wanker! I knew I was right in not liking him!’
‘As soon as he’d got his door open, he seemed so relieved. Like I’d been about to attack him or something; it was so weird. Then he just stood there, sort of like the meeting was over and now it was time for me to go. He looked very very uncomfortable, and so cold all of a sudden—pathologically cold.’
‘Oh Jacq! What did you do?’
‘I didn’t know what to say. So I blabbed something stupid about how all I really meant was “come and get me another drink.” I just made it worse.’
I pull a taught smile. ‘Oh.’
‘It was terrible! A part of me was so ashamed, and the other part was furious that he’d embarrass me like that, even though I know, technically, it was me who was embarrassing.’ She wipes away tears. ‘It was the way he just stood there, as though he was so superior. I am not kidding, he was like a completely different person. Then I blabbed something about how I wasn’t getting on with my boyfriend, and I was going through a hard time with my family, and a close friend had just died, and I didn’t know what had come over me.’
‘Who died?’
‘No one died. I was ad-libbing.’ She stares at me imploringly. ‘I even burst into tears—about the dead person—then he said, “Well, I’m sorry about your loss.” The pompous, self-righteous prick! He sounded like he was some sort of psychologist and I was off my rocker.’ Her teary brown eyes flash venom. ‘So I said, “well, er, I’d better go back to the party” and as I walked out he was already picking up his briefcase to go home. Just like that! So I just walked out of there, walked back to my own office, stood there almost doing something in my pants with shame, then I got my bag and came right over here.’
‘Well, Jacq, there’s obviously something wrong with him. No real man would behave like that. He clearly got some pleasure out of leading you on then embarrassing you.’
She looks right at me, ‘But why, Celine?’
‘Because he’s got problems, obviously. Confidence problems, who knows what? He’s probably got a really tiny penis. Jacqui go home to your boyfriend. Put this past you. Then sit down with the man who wants to marry you, and tell him you are having serious doubts.’
She snivels, looking a tad brighter. ‘Thanks.’ She shakes her head. ‘But I can’t go home to Rich. Not tonight. Not like this. After that. After I’ve come on to some other man. I mean I would have had sex with him right there if he’d wanted.’
‘But you didn’t.’ I pat her shoulder. ‘Everybody does something stupid once in their life, Jacqui. No sense in making it more than what it was.’
‘Please can I stay here?’
‘But…’ I am taken aback. ‘Where will you sleep? I think you should go home.’
She frowns. ‘I’ve told you I’m not going home. I’ll sleep in the spare room! I’ll sleep on the sofa!’
I grimace, feeling awful for lying to her. ‘It’s not entirely convenient.’
She frowns again, looking wounded and confused. Then she looks past my head, and clarity dawns—in the form of Patrick, standing in the doorway to my kitchen.
‘Oh,’ she says, calming down.
‘Hi,’ Patrick says. ‘You must be the sister.’
‘Yes,’ she says, combing him over with wide, watery eyes. ‘And I’m guessing you must be Patrick.’ She glares at me, disappointment registering in her eyes.
‘Look,’ Patrick lays a hand on my shoulder. ‘I think I’m gonna take a cab back to the hotel.’
‘Are you sure?’ I ask him.
He nods, kisses me, then looks at Jacqui. ‘It was nice meeting you briefly. I’m sorry it’s not under better circumstances. And hey, the guy sounds like a complete jackass. Definitely challenged in the manhood department, as Celine says.’
Twenty-Seven
Our time together flies. I am starting to feel that where Patrick is concerned, it’s the story of our lives.
I tell him I can’t come and see him off at the train. I just can’t. Memories of him leaving, once, long ago, haunt too much. He understands. His flight back home to Canada tomorrow is something I can’t think of when I kiss him for the last time.
Not since that conversation in London have we talked about what is to happen next.
I clock-watch—wondering if there were things I might have said and should have said that would make anything different—until I know his train will have been and gone.
Then I go into Newcastle and land myself at Jacqui’s office. I know that she and a few other staff were working the weekend, so I hold it in until we are in the toilet, then I burst into tears. ‘He’s gone!’
She watches me unfold for a long time. ‘And to think, I only just learned he was here.’
I pull a sorry face.
‘So how did you leave it? When are you going to see him again?’
I shake my head. ‘Probably never. We didn’t talk about it. We were so determined not to have the conversation, that we never had the conversation!’ I look up now, from my hankie. ‘What do I do Jacq?’
‘Run away with me! I think I’m going to have to get a new job. Maybe in a new city. We could move in together. I would work and you could stay home and be my housewife.’
I smile at her, through my snivels. It takes me a second to realise what she’s on about. ‘Why? Not because of this stupid Christian episode?’
She parks herself on a toilet lid. ‘Oh—him, Rich, everything really. I need a change. I have to try and find myself the life I have half an idea that I want, Celine. Newcastle’s not exactly the centre of the architectural design universe, either, is it? I mean I always knew when I finished Uni that I’d be limiting myself staying around here.’ She cocks her head and looks at me, sadly. ‘I really only stayed because of you.’
I am touched. And confused. And panicked. ‘But I thought you liked your job? I’ve never once heard you complain about it. I mean, you complain, but in a happy way.’
‘I kept thinking I was all right for now. But maybe now has expired. I do a lot of glorified administrative work really. I mean when I saw myself getting into architecture as a career, it was the creative side I was attracted to. If I’d known I’d be endlessly dealing with sexist contractors, cranky engineers, and basically being some middleman, then I’d have gone and got a masters degree in something else.’
‘But everyone has to pay their dues.’
She stabs an index finger into her chest. ‘I’ve overpaid. I’m owed a refund.’
She looks at me now. ‘Don’t you sometimes wish you’d been born stupid, ugly and smelly so that no one will want you, you’ll never get a boyfriend?’
‘Born smelly,’ I grin. ‘Now there’s an interesting idea.’
She beams. ‘I just envy people with simple lives! I just want a slice of that!’
I pat the top of her foot as she sits there looking rather funny on the toilet. ‘I don’t know anyone with a simple life, Jacq.’
She smiles at me and studies me for a moment or two. ‘What you do—my friend—back to your earlier question—is you wait. You wait for him.’
~ * * * ~
I don’t have to wait long. My mobile rings as I am driving out of Newcastle City Centre. ‘I miss you already,’ he says. ‘I don’t want to go home.’
Twenty-Eight
Mike’s house is nothing much from the outside: a brick-built, Victorian mid-terrace in West Jesmond, just a short walk from the Metro stop. I go to pick up Aimee right from Jacqui’s office.
‘Have you met your neighbours yet? What are they like?’ I ask him, nodding next door.
Mike pulls a tiresome face. ‘A bunch of wankers really. Or, he is. Got uptight about my weeds coming through his fence. And they’re actually not weeds. It happens to be climbing wisteria. So much for what he knows about gardening.’
I study him, affectionately, remembering only t
oo well the wind chimes. Our old neighbour and Mike had a vendetta going. Pat liked to hang wind chimes off his patio, which was fine until a windy night and you were trying to sleep. Instead of being direct, and telling Pat that they were bothering us, and he couldn’t sleep, Mike tried to subtly bring up the topic and the fact that he was a light sleeper. Still the chimes chimed on. Mike dropped progressively less subtle hints. Then one day when Pat was at work, Mike went and took them down. Pat bought new ones. Mike waited until he was out, and took them down too. When Pat brought up the subject of his mysteriously vanishing wind chimes, Mike admitted that he’d taken them down because Pat had failed to get all his hints about them. This pissed Pat off. Pat bought an even noisier set. So Mike started opening windows and blasting heavy metal the minute he saw that Pat was home from work. Mike only stopped his nonsense when he noticed Pat’s For Sale sign had gone up. I assume his moving out had nothing to do with us, but one never knows.
Mike he has on a tight white T-shirt with his black drainpipe jeans. He looks like he’s not shaved in a day or two. Unlike most men, Mike was always his most attractive when he’d done absolutely nothing with himself. It was a look that somehow suited him.
‘Aimee,’ I shout past him up the stairs, wondering when she’s coming down. When there’s no answer Mike says, ‘Look, will you come in? I want to talk to you.’
I gaze past him down the skinny, dark passageway, into the house that I can already tell has none of the home comforts he’s used to. Then I follow him inside.
‘Is it about Aimee?’ I ask him.
He meets my eyes. ‘No, it’s about Jennifer.’
I’m startled. He leads me into the living room, which is boxy and devoid of redeeming features, except for a seldom-used fireplace. He’s bought an uneventful brown leather sofa—a cheaper-looking version of the one we picked together for our place, and an oversized chair. There is a coffee table, and a brass mirror hung above the fireplace. A wilted plant sits on the sill of the curtainless bay window.
