by Hilary Boyd
Donna stopped in the middle of the street and turned to face her.
‘Look, darling, I’m not asking you to fall in love or even bonk the man. I’ll be there too, so it won’t seem like a date. I just think it’d be fun for you both, get you out of that house for a change. Go on, give it a try. He’s only over here till Monday, so if it’s a total disaster you never have to see him again.’ She was peering up into Jo’s face, her light eyes full of amused entreaty.
‘Why is he on his own?’ Jo asked, giving herself time to think about her friend’s request.
‘Divorced. Everyone in Sweden is divorced . . . well, slight exaggeration, but over fifty per cent according to Brian.’
‘Brian? Who’s Brian?’
‘This Swedish guy I’m telling you about? Do keep up.’
‘He can’t be called Brian.’
‘It’s a perfectly normal Swedish name. They’re not all called Lars or Sven you know.’ Donna’s tone was huffy in the face of Jo’s mockery, and to appease her friend she bit the bullet and agreed to go. She could always change her mind.
‘But only if you promise to come too,’ Jo added.
Donna beamed. ‘Good girl. We’ll have a laugh, a few drinks, it’ll be fun.’
‘Tell me you don’t fancy him yourself.’
‘God no!’
‘Why not? Is he awful?’
‘No, he’s gorgeous . . . just not my type.’
As they wandered round the supermarket, Jo tried to imagine being with another man, lying beside him, smelling him, touching his skin, kissing his mouth. It was impossible. She’d met Lawrence when she was twenty-one, in her last term at college. He was working a summer job at the graduate recruitment fair they had at her campus, a large blue-and-white banner tied across his body advertising the sponsors. She’d made a joke about sandwich men – of which there were many in the seventies, wandering up and down streets clamped between wooden boards displaying anything from marketing messages to dotty religious tracts – and they’d struck up a conversation. Before Lawrence there had been two fellow-students, just awkward drunk sex which Jo had taken more as a necessary rite of passage than something significant. Lawrence, as far as she was concerned, was her first. And, indeed, her last. But sex with him had been great from the start, fun and inventive. An image – one she fought off on a minute-by-minute basis these days – of her husband in a naked embrace with Arkadius, flashed behind her eyes.
‘Is it just sex?’ she asked Donna, when they were seated in an open café area upstairs in the stuffy shopping centre, two tall glass mugs of coffee in front of them on the table.
Donna looked at her blankly.
‘With Lawrence. Is that what’s driving him?’
‘You said he claimed to be in love.’
‘But what does that mean? Is he in love with Arkadius in the same way he was with me?’
‘I suppose. There’s only one way isn’t there . . . where you feel sick and mad and delightful and can’t bear to be away from each other for a second.’ Her friend’s face took on a wistful air.
Jo winced. ‘So he looks at Arkadius and feels exactly what he felt for me?’ she repeated.
‘The details will be a tad different, obviously. But basically, yes.’
‘I just can’t imagine it.’
‘You’d be able to if Arkadius was a woman though, wouldn’t you? You’d just hate the bitch!’
‘Hate them both.’ Jo dragged some foam from the edges of her cup and stirred it into her coffee. ‘Why don’t I hate Arkadius?’
‘Because you don’t really believe it,’ her friend replied gently. ‘Have you spoken to Lawrence recently?’
‘He leaves messages sometimes. “Are you all right?” “Just checking to see how you are”, that sort of thing. But I don’t see any point in telling him I’m not. He’s hardly going to do anything about it, is he?’
‘Probably not.’
‘I just wish I could get the image of them in bed together out of my mind. How can I do that?’
‘Not easy. When Julian ran off with the trollop, that’s all I could see: them naked and all over each other. Torture. Only way is to get on with your own life.’
Jo sighed. ‘Swedish Brian you mean.’
‘Not necessarily Brian. Or any man. Just doing stuff that totally involves you.’
For a moment there was silence between them.
‘How’s the writing going?’
‘Nowhere. Frances at Century says I’ve got to come up with something really strong if I want another commission from them. The whole family saga thing just isn’t grabbing the YA market.’
‘Great sense of loyalty these people have. You’ve been with them for what, ten years? And then they just dump you.’
‘It’s not about loyalty, it’s about cash. And she hasn’t dumped me yet. But I can’t write about vampires, they don’t mean anything to me.’
‘So write about something that does . . . like bisexuality. That’s strong, and spot on for hormonal teenagers who don’t know which way is up.’
Jo considered this. ‘Hmm . . . not such a bad idea.’ Then she threw her hands in the air. ‘But that’s the point. I don’t understand it either!’
‘Well, research it. Find out. You must admit it’s a great idea.’ Donna looked pleased with herself.
‘Yeah . . . OK. I might look into it. I’ve got to do something to earn money, now that . . .’ she tailed off, suddenly bored by her one-track mind always coming back to bloody Lawrence Meadows.
*
‘You didn’t tell me he was a child,’ Jo hissed, when Swedish Brian left the table for the men’s room.
They were in a Vietnamese restaurant off Holland Park, white table cloths, bamboo screens, flickering tea lights. Donna scrubbed up well, a far cry from her clay-splattered, apron-wrapped pottery persona. She had on a crimson embroidered silk jacket and black trousers, her short dark hair sculpted and shiny – unlike its usual spiky mess. Jo felt positively dowdy in her plain white T-shirt and jeans.
‘He’s not. He can’t be a day under forty-eight.’ Donna cocked her eyebrow. ‘About Arkadius’s age I’d say.’
‘Yeah, OK. But that is a child, Donna. You can’t seriously have thought that he’d fancy me, especially dressed like this.’
The Swede was charming, good company, gently flirtatious . . . and young. Jo did think he was attractive, in an objective sort of way, but she was almost embarrassed that she did. It seemed sad and undignified.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling. Anyway, you look chic, not like me, the proverbial mutton dressed as lamb. But hey, I’m not quite ready to resort to a paper bag over my head.’
Jo smacked her friend’s hand across the table and they both began to laugh.
‘Have I missed something?’ Brian spoke impeccable English with a slight awkwardness of inflection which made him sound more ponderous than he was.
Both women tried to control themselves, Donna unsuccessfully.
‘Sorry . . . sorry, Brian,’ she spluttered. ‘Jo was just complaining that you were a bit on the young side for her.’
‘Donna!’ Jo blushed, unable to meet his eye. ‘I didn’t mean—’
‘There is no such thing as too young or too old, I think, Joanna.’ He was smiling as he reached for her hand and brought it up to his lips to kiss, which sent Donna into further paroxysms of mirth.
By the time they wheeled out on to the street, they were all drunk.
‘Come back to mine,’ Donna insisted, hailing a passing taxi with authority and bundling Brian into the back before he had a chance to resist.
*
Donna’s sitting room was Bohemian in style, with rust-coloured velvet sofas, button-backed armchairs, Turkish rugs, battered leather poufs from Morocco, and glass-globe standard lamps throwing a soft yellow light. But the art was modern and expensive. It was a comfortable, elegant room.
‘Sit, sit! What’ll it be? I’ve got almost everything. Whisky, gin, Armagna
c, Cointreau, Grey Goose in the freezer, wine, both sorts . . . champagne even, although that’ll be warm.’ Donna hovered by the door that led to the kitchen. She had what Lawrence described as a ‘refugee’ attitude to alcohol. Her father, a doctor and a committed Quaker, never drank, so nobody else in the family was expected to either. ‘I admit I stockpile the stuff,’ she told anyone who saw the extensive drinks cupboard. The Meadows, by comparison, had a cupboard that contained the occasional bottle of wine and, pushed to the back of the shelf, an array of dusty bottles containing liqueurs in lurid, sickly colours, mistakenly collected on foreign holidays by an enthusiastic Lawrence, then never touched.
The Grey Goose, ice delicately clinking in the cut-glass tumbler, was delicious. Jo was drunk already, but she didn’t care. She was cosy and safe, sunk into the cushions on her friend’s soft velvet sofa, shoes off. Brian was next to her, the talk between the three of them fast and funny and totally inconsequential. Life could be good. Fuck Lawrence, she thought and held her glass out for another vodka.
‘OK, you have to go now. I’ve hit a wall,’ Donna announced suddenly, slumped in the armchair, her eyes fluttering closed.
Brian chuckled. ‘We are all lucky we haven’t hit walls.’
Jo wasn’t sure what he meant, but she laughed anyway. Donna just batted her arm towards the hall. ‘Go, go. Shut the door on the way out.’
‘Don’t go to sleep in the chair,’ Jo cautioned, as she bent to kiss her friend’s cheek.
‘See her home!’ Donna shouted to Brian as they both weaved through the furniture, and Brian raised his hand in acknowledgement.
‘I live next door,’ Jo giggled as they shut the front door and began to walk down the path to the gate. The night air was cool and refreshing on her hot cheeks and it was beginning to spit with rain.
‘I know, you told me.’
‘Did I?’ She felt his hand steadying her arm as they reached the pavement.
‘Which way?’
Jo indicated the house on the left. Brian followed her up the path.
‘You don’t have to come all the way.’
‘I said I would see you home.’ Brian’s diction had become more precise the drunker he became, as if he were holding on to his English with great care.
Jo put her key in the lock and pushed the dark blue door open. For a moment they hovered on the doorstep.
‘Well, that was really fun. Thank you.’
‘I enjoyed it too. I’m very happy to have met you,’ the Swede said, then lurched drunkenly towards her and gave her a kiss, full on her lips, which seemed to last for ever. Jo was surprised – no one had kissed her on her mouth for years, except Lawrence of course – but she made no move to push him off. She found herself welcoming his kiss, testing it as you might the appropriate firmness of a new mattress.
Brian pulled away, seemingly unaware that he had done anything unusual. ‘I hope I will see you soon?’
‘That would be good.’
She watched him to the road, then gently shut the door.
*
The next thing she was aware of was the persistent ringing of her landline beside the bed. She automatically reached for it.
‘Hello?’
‘Jo, it’s me.’ Lawrence’s voice shocked her upright in bed. The room looked chaotic, her clothes, which she’d obviously stepped out of as she staggered to bed, were strewn all over the oatmeal carpet, her bra still inside her T-shirt, the patchwork quilt lying in a twisted lump by the door. She was naked, the effort of putting on her nightclothes clearly a step too far. She didn’t reply to Lawrence. Her head pounded and her mouth was sticky and dry, prompting the inevitable and immediate regret about the last two shots of vodka.
‘I’m outside. Can I come in?’
‘Now? Why?’
‘I need to pick up some things.’
His voice wrenched at her gut. It had been weeks since she’d spoken to him and she didn’t know how to react.
‘I won’t take long . . .’ he was saying.
She began to drag herself out of bed, the phone still clutched in her hand.
‘Yeah, OK. Just a minute, I’ll come down.’
Pulling on her T-shirt and pyjama trousers, then her dressing gown, she glanced in the bedroom mirror. She looked like a recent arrival at rehab: her face was drawn, her eyes red, her hair squashed and tangled. Her dull, dehydrated skin was saved only by the edge of a tan. She groaned. Of all days, she thought as she quickly downed the glass of water she always kept by her bed – which was definitely the day before yesterday’s – brushed her hair and slapped a dollop of moisturizer around her face.
Lawrence was standing on the path, texting on his phone when she eventually opened the door. He looked well; tanned and fit, his white shirt rolled to his elbows. She noticed his bike propped against the wooden fence and it was seeing this, the machine that had been for ever joined at the hip with her husband, his obsession, his uncomplaining companion, that made her want to cry.
‘Hi.’ He glanced at her and she could tell he was surprised. ‘Sorry, I thought it’d be a good time . . . it’s nearly ten.’
When they were together it was rare for them to stay in bed later than seven-thirty; they both naturally woke around that time. And ten o’clock was when Jo would have a break from writing, a cup of tea. She suddenly resented him knowing this about her.
‘Late night,’ was all she would say, but she took pleasure in the slight narrowing of his eyes as he took in her dishevelled state.
She held the door for him. He passed her, so close she could have touched him. They both, from habit fostered over decades, walked through to the kitchen, where her husband leaned against the work surface next to the kettle, his hands behind him, holding on to the edge of the wood as if for support.
‘I just need to pick up a couple of maps and a few more books,’ he said. Lawrence had a huge collection of maps from a lifetime of travelling, which stretched over three shelves in his study.
‘You’re going away?’
‘Umm . . . yeah . . . last week in August.’
‘Where?’ She asked because she knew what his answer would be, and she knew it would hurt her, and she wanted it to. She particularly wanted him to see that she was hurt.
He looked suitably embarrassed. ‘Sardinia.’
‘So you, with your fertile brain and a zillion maps, couldn’t find anywhere else to go on this vast planet? You had to choose our place, the place we’ve been to a thousand times . . . together?’
‘I wanted . . .’ Lawrence stopped, knowing, perhaps, that whatever he said he would be digging a deeper hole for himself.
‘You wanted to what? Show Arkadius?’
He didn’t reply, just shifted awkwardly against the work surface. Jo sat down on a kitchen chair. She was battling a third presence in the room. But it wasn’t Arkadius so much as their decades-old and hitherto unquestioned love hovering between them like an impatient ghost, waiting to be acknowledged. She could tell that he was sensing it too. All they had together now was reduced to these stilted, angry sound-bites.
‘I still haven’t heard from Cassie.’ Lawrence may mistakenly have thought this was safer ground.
‘She’s embarrassed. She doesn’t know what to say to you.’
His lips pursed. ‘What shall I do?’
Not my problem, Jo thought, enjoying a moment of Schadenfreude that her husband wasn’t having it quite all his own way.
‘Keep trying, I suppose.’
‘If you speak to her—’ He stopped, obviously seeing the look in her eye. ‘No, OK. I won’t ask.’
Jo was dying for a cup of tea – her head was emitting a regular dull, dehydrated thud – but she didn’t want to offer him one, then have to sit with him, watch him across the table, remind herself of what was now clearly the past.
Lawrence drew himself up, away from the side. ‘I’ll just get what I need,’ he said, still hovering, brushing his white hair back from his face, waiting for somethi
ng, she wasn’t sure what. ‘Was it a fun night?’ he finally asked.
‘Yeah, great,’ she said. ‘A friend of Donna’s, a Swedish guy . . . we got a bit wasted.’ She tried to sound casual, as if this were something she did all the time, deliberately not mentioning Donna’s presence. Let him think it was more than just a few Grey Geese.
‘Oh . . . good. That’s good.’
She thought he was doing the same thing in return, playing the same game of studied nonchalance. Or maybe he really didn’t care that she’d been out with another man. Maybe he was relieved.
When he left soon after, his precious maps of Sardinia tucked discreetly between two books so as not to give offence, she made herself the tea she was longing for and sat down, mulling over this latest uncomfortable encounter with her husband. It was then that she suddenly realized it was Lawrence’s birthday. She’d remembered it all week, of course, but the vodka had done its worst. She sat up straighter. Had he intentionally chosen today to come round? Was he expecting a card or something? It seemed an odd day to choose if he wasn’t. For a moment she felt bad that she hadn’t even said Happy Birthday. He would think she was being deliberately mean. Jo wondered if either Cassie or Nicky would ring him. She doubted it, certainly in Cassie’s case. But Lawrence took family birthdays very seriously. There would always be presents, a homemade cake, some sort of celebration to mark the passing years.
As she took her cup to the sink, she glanced up at the cork board, where Nicky’s birthday photo from three or four years ago had pride of place among much more ancient holiday snaps. Faces glowing in the light from the chocolate cake candles, all smiling, Matt even looking happy, Lawrence waving to her as she took the picture. Tough, she thought, staring at her husband’s features. You chose Arkadius.
Chapter 5
17 August 2013
‘It’s not good news. I spoke to Frances and she really likes your new treatment. She said the bisexual theme was “very real”, I think was how she put it. But . . .’
