The Love Market

by Carol Mason

  He looks across the room wistfully. ‘You know, your mother was the only woman whose portrait I ever painted and kept. I wouldn’t—I couldn’t—sell it.’

  Yes, the post-card size oil he did of her, when they first met, that he gave to me shortly after her funeral. That I haven’t been able to look at since for some odd reason. One day—some day—I will. When I am ready to go there.

  He looks at me quizzically now. ‘Why did I never paint you?’

  ‘I don’t know. I once hoped you would.’

  ‘Madness. I will one day. If you’ll let me.’

  I smile. ‘I’ll let you.’

  We hold eyes. Then he says, going back to what we had just been talking about, ‘What I’m trying to say to you is, if you’re feeling that Patrick isn’t matching you ideal for ideal, that’s a good thing not a bad thing. He’s being prudent when you can’t be.’

  The waitress sets down a doily-lined, single-tiered silver tray with four fat, golden scones on them. My father ploughs right in.

  And I think, is Patrick just being prudent?

  Or does he just not want me enough?

  Forty-One

  Mike comes to pick up Aimee for their Saturday thing. Only he’s early, and she’s still over at a friend’s, so I invite him in and offer him a cup of tea. It’s a rotten, rainy night, and in the kitchen we try to talk overtop the sound of the loose downspout knocking against the wall.

  ‘I’ll fix it,’ he says. I open my mouth to protest, but he’s already outside, removing the small key to the garage that I keep behind the back door—to let himself in to get the step ladders.

  He’s up there a while. I keep looking out to make sure he’s all right. Drops of rain cling to the fading rose bushes like hundreds of the world’s tiniest fairy lights. It suddenly strikes me that Northumberland is beautiful. The mists. The rain. The vastness beyond my window. I do want to live here in my own strange, slow-to-realise way. And Patrick was right: I do have a lot to be thankful for.

  Mike is quite soaked when he comes back in, and takes off his jacket and puts it over the back of the kitchen chair. Then he goes to the sink first and washes his dirty hands, while I re-boil the kettle.

  Thanks,’ he says, taking the mug of tea off me. Mike always used to be busy fixing things around the house. So in a way this feels normal. I have one of those surreal moments where I still feel married to him, I can’t believe he ever left.

  Patrick asked me to go to Canada for Christmas,’ I find myself telling him, punctuating our silences. ‘But I’m not going. I said it wouldn’t be fair on you and Aimee.’

  He was about to take a drink. Stops. ‘Well, how about if you could persuade Aimee to have Christmas with me and Jennifer, and you go to Canada by yourself?’

  I put down the mug that was on its way to my lips, but don’t answer him right away. ‘I would have thought you’d have jumped at the chance,’ he says.

  I watch him, and try to read him but it’s difficult. It’s as though there is a blanket laid over his emotions, which has the duel effect of buffering us both from them. ‘Well, the thing is, I don’t think it’s going to work with me and Patrick.’

  He looks at the space on the floor between his feet. ‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

  I go on watching him, but he doesn’t look up. ‘Are you in love with Jennifer?’

  He goes on studying the floor between his feet as though he’s looking at it for an answer. ‘No,’ he says. ‘But I do enjoy her company.’

  He holds my eyes now. We sit here, listening to the rain, in this study of one another. Then Mike says, ‘See the thing is, I suppose there’s something I’ve always known about myself, Celine. I only ever wanted one woman. And I married her. And unfortunately for me I’m still in love with her.’

  Forty-Two

  His mobile rings. He hesitates, then reaches to the chair, to his jacket pocket. He looks at who’s calling, puts it back in the pocket. ‘It’s Jennifer,’ he says, and huffs a little, ironically. ‘I should go.’

  He plucks his jacket from the back of the chair, but he doesn’t immediately move to leave.

  ‘Don’t go,’ I tell him, quietly.

  He looks at me now, tiredly.

  ‘We should talk.’ I say. But I’m not even sure what I plan on talking about. I want him to leave. I want him to stay.

  He frowns, half shrugs. ‘Celine, you’re with somebody else. Fine there are glitches, but I’m sure you’ll work it out. And I’m with Jennifer now.’

  ‘I thought you said you didn’t love her?’ I clear my throat.

  ‘That doesn’t mean that I’m not really fond of her, that I don’t really enjoy her company, or that I never will be in love with her. We can hope, right?’

  His eyes cut into me and mine drop away from his face. Then he walks around me, kisses me once on the cheek, then walks down our passageway to the front door. I hurry after him and just as he’s opening it, say, ‘Why did you kiss me then? I mean—before.’

  He sighs and shrugs again. ‘That’s a good question. I don’t know. I shouldn’t have. I couldn’t help myself. It was the moment.’

  He reaches for the door handle. ‘Mike, I really need you to tell me if you don’t think it’s over between us.’ There. I have said it.

  I stop him with my words. He lowers his head for a moment or two, and I can’t tell if he’s welcoming this or if he’s irritated. When he looks up again he talks to the door rather than look at me. ‘You know, there was a time, Celine, when I hoped it might not be.’ He turns to face me now. ‘When I emailed him, there was a small part of me thinking that if you got back together with him and it didn’t work out, then I might get you back.’ He shakes his head, almost laughs. ‘Mad eh?’

  Then he glances upstairs, in the direction of the bedroom that we once shared. He seems to be thinking or taking stock. ‘I don’t feel like that now,’ he says.

  His words take me aback. Yet there is not a part of me that doubts him. I see it clearly in his face—something that Mike might not yet have even realised about himself. Mike has stopped loving me. He may claim differently, but he’s still harbouring a fantasy; it can be a hard habit to get over.

  ‘I think it was just something I had to go through. I had to hold out some hope I’d get you back, just to lessen the pain of losing you. But now I know I’d never want to go back. Thinking you’re happy isn’t the same as being happy. I know that now.’

  He continues shaking his head long after he stops speaking. ‘I don’t know what you’re really asking me, or really saying, but I hope you’re not even thinking that you want to get back together, Celine. We had our chance. Now you have to take a chance on somebody else, and so do I.’

  ‘Are you going to marry her?’ I remember what he said long ago, about how we learn things: that just because you’re in love doesn’t mean you’re going to be happy, and just because you’re not in love doesn’t mean you’ll be any worse off.

  ‘I don’t see me marrying anyone again, actually,’ he says. ‘I think being married to you was probably as good as anyone could really expect marriage to be. But if that’s as good as it could ever be, well then it’s not worth it.’

  He watches me passively, while the blood rushes to my head and my heart hammers as his words cut through me. ‘But the good thing is, if I do marry again, and it doesn’t work out, I know it’ll never feel as bad as this, so there’s some comfort in that. Because this has been pretty bad, I have to admit.’

  He nods me up and down, as though he might follow this with Goodnight, or I’m going now, or something. But nothing.

  When he’s out the door and half way down the path he turns and looks back at me. ‘Don’t kid yourself, Celine, you don’t want me back either. Not really. And you know you don’t. Not deep in your heart. Go with your heart,’ he says. ‘You’re the kind of person who should, maybe more than others. It’s the only thing that works for you.’

  Forty-Three

  The party preparations, and C
hristmas, consume me. A month to go, and I have seventy confirmed guests, most of whom intend to bring a friend or two. Paula—David Hall’s photographer girlfriend—is going to take some snazzy photos, hoping to land us in the local newspaper. My event planner client referred me to the world’s finest hors d’oeuvres caterer who knows how to do things with an asparagus spear that boggle the mind. And Trish, who claims she’s an expert in alcohol, has been having tonnes of fun designing weird and wonderful martini concoctions that I’m going to serve. All I need to find is my dance instructor and I’m all set. Aimee claims she doesn’t want anything for Christmas, only the right to spend up to a hundred pounds on buying things for her costume.

  The article on the Love Market came out in the November issue of Hers magazine, angled slightly differently. They ended up sending a photographer here to shoot me, and a lovely picture of me led the piece. Because of the publicity, I’ve had eight phone calls from women keen to join, and, interestingly, one from a man: a thirty-nine-year-old consultant heart specialist. He filled out my personality questionnaire, and sounds interesting. By his picture he looks quite nice, and while I don’t have time to fake date him, I suggested he come to the party.

  Aimee has a copy of the invitation she designed pinned up on her wall. ‘It’s good,’ I tell her.

  ‘I’m crap at art. Granddad says my wave looked more like an unclipped toenail.’

  I tut. ‘Your granddad thinks being hard on you will motivate you.’ I remember how he used to encourage me to draw. But because I knew he was trying to mould me into an image of himself, I deliberately made myself fail. ‘He liked the sand dunes you did.’

  ‘He said they looked like breasts.’

  I groan.

  She wipes the back of her wrist over her cheek. ‘I’m useless. I can’t even get a good mark when I copy somebody’s exam.’

  ‘You copied somebody’s exam?’

  ‘Once.’ She flushes. ‘But I copied the wrong person. He was even dumber than me.’

  ‘Aimee! Don’t ever call yourself dumb! I never got good marks in school and I’ve done fine! There’s more to life than being measured against everybody else. Sometimes you have to just be proud of what you achieve for yourself, and stop comparing yourself to other people, or you’ll never be happy. There’s always somebody better, cleverer, prettier.’

  ‘You really don’t think I’m useless then?’

  I smile. ‘On a scale of one to ten—ten being the least useless you could ever be—you’re a seven.’

  She looks horrified. ‘You could still try much harder to beat your dad at Wii tennis. You could try putting a load of dark laundry in without washing my white blouse with it. You could get a Saturday job as a farmer.’

  I see her smile.

  ‘But other than that, I can’t really think of anything else that’s useless about you.’

  ~ * * * ~

  On Thursday night, before we officially roll into December, I do what I know has to be done. The decision toys with me and tests me. I believe in it with every ounce of me, one minute, then I doubt it. I doubt it so strongly that, for once, I’m sure about everything, suddenly, in my life: and I’m so relieved. Until I’m besieged again with the reality that I want to fight, but can’t.

  I phone Patrick, and when he answers I tell him that I can’t do this any more.

  ‘Having you come back into my life made me believe in something. And you know what? It’s a lovely dream. But I don’t honestly see how it can be anything else any more.’

  I’m done, but he goes on listening. After a long silence, he says, a very quiet, ‘I’m sorry you see it that way.’ And those few words, and the way he says them—disappointed, but not crushed—make me wonder if I was right: that Patrick has loved me, but perhaps he hasn’t loved me quite enough.

  ‘You were the one who said we were dreaming,’ I tell him.

  ‘I know, but I didn’t mean it. I knew that as soon as the words came out of my mouth.’

  ‘Patrick, I just know that I can’t get on with my life talking to you nearly every day on the phone and not being able to really have you in my life, and having this be so open-ended.’

  ‘When did you decide this?’ he asks, sounding a bit more human again.

  ‘Maybe when I heard you were taking the job.’

  ‘Celine...’ Exasperation.

  ‘I’m just saying that’s when I knew it was impossible. I’m not blaming you. You have to work. I understand that. Who would not understand that?’

  ‘But if I hadn’t taken it, I’d have probably gone back abroad again—to what I know, to what I’ve done for twenty years—so how is this different?’

  I laugh now, a little. ‘It’s not. That’s the point. It doesn’t make it any better; it just makes it the same. And for me, I just know I’m not the kind of person who can keep coming over there to see you, having such a fabulous time, falling more and more in love with you, and then having to come home, and live my life looking forward to the next time, however many months away that will be.’

  ‘Celine…’ he sighs. ‘Aimee’s nearly a teenager. In a few years she’ll be grown up and moved out, and you can go and live and be who you want to be, and do what you please.’

  I laugh again. ‘A few years? Patrick, no!’

  ‘Why not? We waited fifteen to meet again; what’s a few more?’

  ‘Just… no.’ I shake my head. ‘And the funny thing is, I think I already am who I want to be. In some ways I’m already doing what I please now. Maybe this is all too much too fast. Maybe I have to get used to me being on my own, it just being me and Aimee. I might have to start with that.’ If I were my own client, would I not be asking myself if this is not another slightly more storybook version of the classic rebound situation?

  ‘I don’t know what to say,’ he says. ‘I really don’t. Except that I disagree. Strongly.’

  ‘Let’s just agree to leave it,’ I tell him. ‘To recognise what we had for the lovely thing that it was. And leave it.’ Then I say the hardest words I’ve ever said. ‘Goodbye Patrick.’

  ~ * * * ~

  Jacqui comes back up for Christmas and we celebrate it with my dad and Anthea, and Mike. Jennifer was invited to a cousin’s in Dundee, and Mike said he didn’t feel like going. We eat turkey with our paper hats on that Aimee made, and listen to Bing’s White Christmas.

  After, we watch two films, my father squeezed on the couch in the middle of Anthea and Jacqui, and we drink copious amounts of red wine, and pass around various boxes of chocolates, some better than others—the handmade ones that Jacqui bought in London, definitely the star. Around six p.m. my company starts to go home.

  We won’t have many Christmases together like this, I think. But I’m pleased we had this one. I know that by this time next year, we will all have moved on, becoming more sure of the new steps we have taken. There will not be this need to gravitate to what’s familiar. Because it won’t be so familiar any more. That’s just the way life is.

  When I see Mike off at the door, he kisses me once on the cheek. Mike won’t be coming to my party. He’s going up to Scotland to spend New Year’s with Jennifer. As I watch him walk down the garden path, in his skinny jeans with his thigh-length sheepskin jacket, I realise something that not so very long ago would have made me come apart at the seams:

  I will always love Mike. I will love him equally as much as I have always loved him. But Mike was right. Mike knew something I didn’t know at the time: that I don’t want him back. Divorce is like hacking down a mature tree; it leaves an unsightly gap and you want something to quickly grow in its place. You find yourself staring at it and remembering not why you cut it down in the first place, but only how nice it used to look. But eventually you can look at it and a part of you forgets it was ever there.

  Forty-Four

  David Hall’s stately pile opens its doors to, among the more notable: a masked red devil, masked playboy madam, masked phantom of the opera, masked Cinderella, a maske
d black cat, masked batgirl, masked batman, and four masked court jesters. Jacqui dons a stunning silver sequins floor-length gown and is, she tells me when I can’t guess, “a masked Hollywood actress at the Oscars.” She tuts. ‘Isn’t it bloody obvious?’

  ‘Which one?’ I ask her over the top of Barry White singing “Let The Music Play”.

  ‘Angelina Jolie and Kate Winslet all rolled into one,’ she grins showing white teeth under disco lights, lined in ample red lipstick.

  ‘When are you coming home?’ I ask her.

  ‘Never.’

  ‘Please?’

  ‘Sorry. I’m never coming back up to this dump.’

  ‘Don’t call Newcastle a dump! Just because you’re a Londoner now!’

  She laughs. ‘I’m just happy down there now! Except for missing you. It’s almost perfect. And maybe almost is as good as any of us gets in this life.’

  ‘Oh. My. God!’ Someone taps me on the shoulder as Jacqui and I are trying to move a giant candelabra that got placed dangerously too close to the edge of the martini bar. When I turn around it’s Trish and James. ‘Your dress!’ she says. James whistles as I do a twirl for them.

  ‘I’m one of the professional dancers on Dancing With The Stars,’ I tell them, holding out my arms to show off the dramatic slit bell sleeves of my frock that I ordered from a second-hand ballroom gown shop off the Net.

  ‘It’s the most stunning thing I’ve ever seen!’ Trish says.

  I look down at myself, still amazed that other than a minor little let-out around the hips, the dress fit me so well. It’s aquamarine, with an asymmetrical neckline and a low waist that leaves my entire back bare. The bodice is what the description called “cracked ice” lace, and the skirt a full soft charmeuse satin. As it came with a wrap that I knew I’d never wear, I had a seamstress cut it up and sew a mask out of it. Aimee helped me choose my high sliver stilettos—insisting on only one thing: that she could buy the same pair.