by Nick Laird
Another pause. David stared at his spaghetti, trying to divine things from it.
‘“Everything about Ruth is unexpected. She can recite, in alphabetical order, the names of all fifty states. On her right foot her second toe is slightly longer than the first, the big toe, or the King of the Toes, as she calls it. She has eleven freckles on her back and doesn’t like beer or frozen yoghurt or the Beatles.”’
David didn’t know about the frozen yoghurt. Or the freckles.
‘“She can’t drive, though she does make the most wonderful passenger. But even more exciting than the things I know about her are the things I don’t. I love the fact that we’re only beginning a journey towards getting to know each other, and I’m sure it’s going to be interesting…Working at her art is, as you all know, what Ruth has dedicated her life to. And I wake in the mornings delighted to have found her, a work of art to which I can dedicate mine.”’
The sentiment caught David off guard with its neat reversal, and he felt it for a second. The range and draw and compulsion of it; the unlikelihood made it more remarkable not less. He loved her indeed; that was not in doubt-though neither was it the point. There were no impediments left to love, no restrictions or barriers or secrets, and thus love had lost its power. It did not make the world go round: that was, at least according to Glover, the conservation of initial momentum and the gravitational field of the sun. David tuned back in.
‘“…pursuing artistic perfection, she recently had the good taste to ask me to sit for her, or stand, actually, in the nude, which has obviously brought us even closer together…Ruth is beautiful, as you can see, maybe the most beautiful woman I’ve met”’—David very much liked that maybe-‘“and not just on the outside. I don’t think she could make such beautiful things unless they reflected the beauty inside her.”’
David imagined Larry’s face, not knowing what to do with itself, pulled between sincere irony and insincere politeness. And Jess! He began willing Glover to make more declarations, to go higher and faster and deeper; but he had come down to brass tacks.
‘“Of course, I’m aware there’s an age gap between us, and some of you might even say she’s old enough to be my mother, but well, my mum’s here today, and you can see the difference. No offence, Dad!”’
He grinned at David and scratched at the acne scars on his jaw, confirming that this was indeed a gag, and David’s cue to laugh. He did so, and genuinely. Something seemed to free itself. He laughed and laughed.
‘ “And Ruth may be older but that doesn’t make her wiser. Our relationship is not simply one-way. I’ve taught her several important things about English culture, which means the pub, a topic I’m something of an expert on. I’ve also taught her how to use the iPod she’d had for a year and which was still in its box. In turn she persuaded me to finally try sushi, which I now know isn’t for me…So I’d like to thank Ruth for a terrific six months, and for having another go at marriage. I assure you all that this time it’s for good.”’
David pouted and sucked in some air. ‘Do you really think you should say that this time it’s for good?’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, is it not a bit like saying the other times it wasn’t right, or even the other times it was for bad or something?’
‘She didn’t stay with those people.’
‘I’m not sure that’s quite how it works. Is it not better to think that relationships are right for the moment? That they’re all provisional?’
‘They don’t have to be.’
‘But something can be provisional for your entire life. Your entire life’s provisional anyway.’
He shrugged his boxy shoulders, then snapped his ardent gaze across to the toaster again as if Ruth really was there in the corner, and he expected her to support him.
‘Look, let me finish it…’ He gripped the worktop’s edge and propelled himself up and sat on the counter. ‘“We’re delighted that you could all make it today and support Ruth and me. And we’d like to invite any of you, all of you, to come visit us in the Big Apple.”’
The Big Apple! David saw Bridget crushing ice in her vodka with a straw, Jess raising her eyebrows at Larry.
‘“And so I’d like to invite you all to join me in toasting my wonderful wife Ruth.”’ He raised his tumbler of Diet Coke. ‘“A toast to Mrs Glover.”’
Glover told David once that he couldn’t trust people, but in fact the opposite was true. He had too much trust. It would be tough on him. He regarded everything as fixable, thought relationships were just machines that ran either well or badly, that they had cogs and springs and circuits. He believed that all the operations of the earth accorded to the laws of Newton, that cause and effect were linked by the simplest equations. But these are complicated times, and the mechanics of the adult life are quantum. Such principle that can exist is of uncertainty.
David told him that his speech was perfect.
Where one might pin a medal
‘Can I use your printer? I want to change those particularlys and mine’s out of ink.’
David had just lowered himself, gasping, into a too-hot bath when Glover knocked on the door.
‘Sure, you’ll have to email the speech to yourself and open it up on my laptop. It’s all plugged in.’
‘Cheers, matey.’
Ten minutes later David’s temperature had adjusted, though perspiration had broken out on his forehead. He was soaping his crevices with pomegranate body gel when Glover shouted something through from David’s bedroom.
‘You what?’
‘I said, I didn’t know you had a blog, Mr Dampener!’
David sat up straight, sending a backwash up over the bath rim and onto the lino. He dropped the plastic bottle against his thigh, where it bobbed merrily.
‘Don’t read it! Please don’t read it!’
‘Why not?’
‘It’s private!’
‘Don’t be daft. It’s online.’
Both were shouting but only David had panic in his voice. He struggled to get up out of the bath, a pink soft thing, water cascading from him like Botticelli’s Venus. He felt faint from the heat of the water and had just tucked a towel round his waist when Glover banged very hard on the door.
David slid the lock across and Glover gave it a sudden shove. The base of the door stubbed David’s toe and then Glover was in the bathroom with him, very close and very angry. Ineffectually, David tried to push him away as he jabbed a finger in his chest.
‘What is wrong with you?’
A pearly fleck of spittle flew from Glover’s lip and landed on David’s collarbone. He grabbed David by the arm to pull him out of the bathroom. Strong as Glover might be, David had weight on his side, and he stood inert and doughy, gripping the sink with one hand.
‘Get into the fucking living room.’
‘James, fuck off.’
When Glover stalked from the bathroom David slid the bolt across, but he hadn’t finished pulling on his dressing gown before Glover banged again.
‘What?’
‘What? Well, let’s see fucking what.’ He heard plastic bump against the wood and realized Glover was holding his laptop. The mirror had steamed up. Suddenly he couldn’t bear to see himself erased, and wiped it with his hand, which gave his face the aqueous distortions of a funfair mirror. Glover started reading.
‘“This tired view of sexuality…this triumphant lesbiana…” What the fuck is triumphant lesbiana? “Fetishistic…the new painting, James the First, features a young emasculated neutered male, his torso a site for the conflicting demands of hatred and sexual tension…the banality of resorting to tired dialectics…”’
‘They’re just opinions,’ David offered in a dwindled, childish voice.
‘“Ruth Marks has embarked on a series of romantic adventures, all of which have ended badly…She left her first husband for a woman…”’ Glover fell silent, then asked in a clipped, lowered voice, ‘Is that true?’
Davi
d wiped at the mirror again and looked at himself, then widened his eyes in greeting. Hello, David, how do you do? I’m fine, David, thanks for asking. How are you? No, how are you really?
‘I think so. Bridget told me.’
‘When did she tell you that? When you had lunch?’ The panic was in his voice now, but the anger came back, and the disgust. ‘What’s wrong with you?’
David loosely knotted the cord of his dressing gown and sat on the edge of the bath. He should have been more careful. He mopped at his forehead with his towelling sleeve.
‘I suppose I felt a bit let down…’
There was silence and David pulled the lock across. He swung the door open and Glover was still standing there, still staring at the screen of the laptop.
‘Please. Don’t read any more.’
‘“Wanking ourselves senseless”? “The Death of Love”? You bitter little fuck. Is this you? Is this who you are? Is this who I’m living with?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t think so. Please. Give it to me.’
David tried to grab the laptop and Glover held on to it; then it fell to the laminate floor of the hallway, and bounced open, almost flat. David screamed as a viridescent liquid spread across the screen and red vertical lines appeared.
‘Oh fuck-sorry,’ Glover said, polite till the end.
David dropped to his knees and ran his fingers over the screen, then tried pressing some buttons.
‘No, no, no, no.’
Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life, and thou no breath at all? The laptop was fucked. He shut it, clicking the screen softly in place as one might close the lid of a coffin. When he looked up, Glover was gone.
David was at a loss. He set the laptop on the lid of the toilet and locked the door again. Unsure what to do next, he climbed back into the bath and lay there, corpse-like. A spreading pink welt had appeared on his chest where Glover had jabbed him with his finger, above the left nipple. When the bruise came it would be where one might pin a medal. He turned the hot tap on again and watched the rising water threaten the desert island of his stomach. It lacked only a palm tree. No man is an island, thought David, apart from me. Then he dried and dressed himself slowly, and slunk into the living room. There was nowhere else to go.
‘James, I’m…sorry. I think I’m depressed maybe. I don’t know why-I don’t really think that stuff about Ruth, or her work, or any of it.’
Glover didn’t look up from the property show on TV. ‘Will your insurance cover the laptop?’
‘I don’t have insurance.’
‘Well, maybe I can give you something towards replacing the screen. It’s probably just the screen.’
‘I’ll take that stuff down from the website as soon as I sort out my computer.’
‘Yeah, I don’t want to think about that.’
‘But I feel—’
‘I don’t give a fuck about what you feel, David. Let’s just forget it. I’m sorry your laptop got broke but I don’t want to talk about this any more. I don’t think Ruth needs to hear about this. It would upset her too much. She thinks you adore her, if you can believe that.’
‘I do adore her. I do.’
‘You seem to hate her.’
‘Of course not.’
‘You know, I’m out of here tomorrow, and I cannot fucking wait.’
How might David explain it to Glover? Real emotions were not distinct. They were like colours, they ran into each other. When does the day become the night? The neck the shoulder? Everything laps and overlaps. But for Glover to every thing there was a season, right was right and man was man and wrong was wrong and woman woman, and every single object his righteous eyes could see appeared to have been edged with a thick, black line, like the scenes from a colouring book.
Though they left the house to go to the party together, they were not speaking, and when David stopped off to buy cigarettes, Glover didn’t wait. By the time he came out of the shop, his flatmate was stalking off in the distance. Feeling ridiculous, David followed.
He had a sense it would end up being a very long evening. Not to mention a very long weekend, a very long life. Tomorrow he had to dress like an egg and give his ludicrous celebratory speech. His phone vibrated and he clawed it from his jeans. Ruth.
‘David, hi. I’m trying to get hold of James.’
‘Oh, I think he’s turned his phone off. His mum and dad kept ringing him.’
‘Listen, we were at the Tavern but Jess has just gotten a call from-oh no, hang on, I see you…’
The phone cut off and a black cab pulled up abruptly beside him. The window slid down and Ruth appeared, mouthing something.
‘You’re going the wrong way,’ David laughed before he realized there was a problem. He could make Jess out on the far side of her, crouched on the edge of the seat, talking forcefully into a mobile phone. And behind the cab, past the traffic lights, unnoticed by Jess and Ruth, he could see Glover’s broad receding back.
‘Jess just got a call from Ginny’s niece. She’s sick. She woke up from a nap with pains in her arms, and you know what that can mean. We’re heading straight down to Chichester now.’
‘Well, you’ll have to get a train. Or maybe I could drive you there. You can’t take a cab the whole way—’
Ruth waved the notion impatiently away.
‘It’s fine. But listen, can you tell James, and tell him I’m sorry not to be there to see his parents.’
A bus had pulled up behind the cab and the driver gave a long blast on his horn. The taxi was blocking the bus stop. David looked angrily at the driver, a Sikh with a very narrow face, who wagged a many-jointed finger towards the bus stop sign.
‘Tell him I love him and can’t wait for tomorrow.’
David nodded stupidly. ‘I hope everything’s all right. Ring me on my mobile. I’ll tell James to turn his on.’
David ducked a little to try to smile in at Jess but she was busy, somewhere between angry and scared, saying sharply, ‘Oh, Miriam, just tell me what he said. I’m not a child.’
The horn of the bus blasted again; Jess twisted her willowy body around to wave her phone through the back window at the bus driver. She wanted to tell her news to the world; then it would part for her like the Red Sea. The taxi began to pull off and Ruth shouted, ‘Give our love to everyone.’
In the Tavern David saw Glover sitting with Eugene and Tom at the table in the hidden snug downstairs, obviously having a quick shot or two before heading up to face the party. David pretended not to have seen them and no one called him over. Though he normally found entering parties uniquely stressful, that evening he just straightened his back and walked fearlessly in. He had a secret and it lent him purpose. He checked the room for Gayle, but couldn’t see her. Larry was slouched in a corner with a pretty girl and David headed towards him. He thought he might know, that Ruth might have called him, but he seemed oblivious, and David felt curiously reluctant to pass the news on. Larry would take charge and tell everyone. He would organize flowers, an airlift, a satellite link-up to Chichester hospital.
David let the conversation drift through the week’s weather, the forecast for tomorrow, and then, unexpectedly, the girl’s admiration for Ruth’s art, particularly her paintings. David informed her that Ruth wouldn’t be attending tonight. She’d been here for a second but had been called away. Larry wanted details, predictably. David could tell he was itching to stand on a chair, let his beautiful assistant tap her wine glass for silence and then announce that he had an announcement.
David grew vague, said that Jess and Ruth had had to hurry off and that he must have just missed them. He said he wanted to speak to Glover before he said anything more. Larry was nodding; he couldn’t push too hard because it was becoming obvious that he was not, as David was certain he’d represented, Ruth’s closest confidant.
David recognized Glover’s parents, Robin and Jane, from the photograph in his flatmate’s room. They were sitting on one of the green leather chesterfields, in
a manner that a body-language expert would describe as closed. The sofas had been moved close to face each other, and opposite them sat David’s parents. His mother, dressed entirely in citrus yellow, had spotted him and was waving as if he were partially sighted. Obediently he trotted over.
‘James not arrived?’
The volley of love that was his mother’s first question.
‘No, I haven’t seen him yet.’
‘I’m James’s father, Robin. You must be David.’
The fingers were overlong and travelled too far round David’s hand. They applied themselves to the skin. That must be a requirement, David found himself thinking, for playing the accordion; he glanced around, just in case Robin had brought it.
‘And David, I understand you’re the best man for this whatever-it-is tomorrow.’
Jane threw a horrified, nervous glance at her husband. Whatever agreement they’d made, he was breaking.
‘Apparently Ruth’s here. Have you seen her? Can you point her out? Let’s hear what she’s got to say.’
Robin’s nose was a shark’s fin, and there was something similarly predatory about his thin-lipped mouth. The eyes were wide and blue and similar to Glover’s but lacked his son’s good nature. For a religious man, he was a little too fastidious, the cuffs just so, the hair swept neatly apart with the comb tracks still showing. David would bet any money that something unruly raged in the heart that thudded under his checked sports jacket. David wouldn’t, for example, want to be a young woman trapped in a lift with him. Anyone who used his name so much was trying either to con or convert him-which was, of course, much the same thing.
And David could tell that Jane had been conned. She smiled and smiled and smiled, but you knew that in an ideal world she’d have cut her husband’s throat many years ago. She had made bad decisions, including the one to disguise the hair on each side of her upper lip by dying it. Now white whiskers curved around the corners of her mouth. Coupled with the twitchy nervousness, the impression left was of a kitten caught lapping at another kitten’s milk.
