I looked at Uma. It was obvious she wasn't listening. Nor was she paying much attention to the boys, who were painting at Harry's play table. She was gazing out through the French windows, which looked onto the facing block. A bare-backed roofer was up on the roof, roofing.
I'd got to know Uma quite well over the past four months. We made a habit of letting the other mothers drift off after the playgroup while we fussed with coats and hats, diapers, tissues, and then we'd walk for ten minutes until our ways parted. About one time in three, we'd go on a bagel run. Uma would do most of the talking, wittily satirizing the rest of the group and giving me her oblique take on world politics, great literature, and unacceptable sexual positions. She didn't talk much about her job but had one day let slip that she worked for a shopping channel. “Look,” she'd said, “I know it's shitty, I know it's kitsch. There's nothing glamorous about selling zircon diamonds to fat girls in Manchester. I know that with the gold chains we sell, the race is on for whether the copper dyes you green first or the nickel brings you out in red welts. But it's television, and that's where I want to be. Problem?”
I did have a problem with it, but I quite liked our ten-minute walks. She'd never asked me what I did for a living.
“So what do you do, then, for a living? Or do you just sponge off Celeste?” She smiled her wide-mouthed smile and leaned closer to me, showing now some of the skin beneath the bottom line of bra, but still no real breast. I'd noticed that Uma's body was always at its most flirty when her mouth was at its cruelest.
It was lucky that I had my new answer to that question.
“I'm in radio journalism.”
She recoiled a little. Good.
“What sort of radio journalism?”
She was trying to sound skeptical, trying to give the impression that she thought I worked on the night-shift sports bulletins for Radio Northampton.
“Oh, just this and that. Odds and sods. Opinion stuff, mainly. In fact, …”
Now, it's hard to believe that this wasn't all planned, but it wasn't. I didn't invite her around at this time: as I've said, I thought she'd be over for lunch and miss it—the “it” being my latest broadcast, the fourth in my weekly series. The first, following my initial formless rant, had been about trying to walk Harry to sleep so I could enjoy my scrotum-tightening tea. The second was an extended version of the purchase and combat performance of the Pooh Bear hat. The third was a disguised, indeed distorted, account of playgroup flirtations, in which Uma became (while retaining her essential luminous Uma-ness) a raven-haired Spanish temptress, called Mercedes.
I'd forgotten what today's was about. I recorded them in blocks of three, and in my mind, they tended to merge into one long humorous, I hoped, complaint.
“It just so happens that one of my, er, things is on about … now.”
While she occupied herself with looking at the same time perplexed and mocking (she was really quite good at giving simultaneous face to apparently contradictory feelings), I went and fetched the kitchen Roberts radio, greasy as a Turkish wrestler, buzzy as a loose tooth. I flicked it on.
I was just in time. There was my voice. Each time I listened, I heard new ways in which my voice was wrong. Today it sounded thick: thick, as of a tongue only a little too large for its mouth, a tongue, moreover, nicked, scarred, sore, from the cruel attentions of the sharp lower edge of a cheap and inexpertly fitted gold cap.
It's not that I think there are any indelible differences between men and women, or any major differences that set women and men apart as classes—all the differences among individuals are much more important than the differences between groups—but sometimes thinking and talking as if these differences were real can be a creative way of getting at the heart of things, of thinking about people and what they're like.
So it was that one.
“Is that you? That's you!” Uma was looking, for her, quite impressed. “And you just said all that word for word. What is it, do you only have, like, three things to say, and you go on saying them over and over again?”
What is it about women that makes them want to do things to perfectly good apartments every few months, just because some …
“I don't like to waste good material. Or any material. And anyway, yes, I do actually run on a cycle. I have about three years’ worth of conversation, which I reckon isn't bad, as most people don't have three minutes’. But that's why I have to get new friends every three years.”
… while men are content to let the crap accumulate like guano around a gannet's nest …
I didn't add that I also tended to repeat on a regular cycle that my conversation repeated itself on a regular cycle. I thought that would be too self-referential.
“It is a bit obvious, though, isn't it?”
“What, repeating myself?”
“No, getting me around here just so you could show me how clever you are, being on the radio. Like I'm supposed to be impressed.”
She said that with a little smile, which took the sting out of it. Somehow she could almost always do that: say something that you'd think had to be completely unacceptable, going purely by the actual words used, but that felt playful, light, teasing, coming from her lips. So rather than a knife in the ribs, what you felt was a pleasurable back scratching, by long nails.
“It wasn't that … I didn't even know you were coming so early. But it would have seemed, I don't know, pretentious, not to put it on, now you were here, and it being broadcast. Now.”
Ha-ha-ha, another bulletin from the wilder shores of parenting-hood next week from Sean Lovell. And now a follow-up to our report on anal fistulas and the possible link to ozone depletion.
I made them pasta and pesto for lunch. Oscar ate enough to fuel a power station (perhaps they have pesto-powered turbines in Tuscan hill towns). Harry threw linguini on the floor and then climbed down to mash it in with his socks. Uma drank a bottle of Chianti, complaining all the time about how she hated Chianti, and then drove off to drop her child at his nursery and prepare for an afternoon of cheesy selling.
“The poor must have their baubles,” she said, as if it were a quote.
Before she left, she turned and gave me a quick kiss on the lips, light and sharp and cool as a diving kingfisher.
PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADAGUCCI 12
I don't believe it. Everything's changed. Sean has put a new operating system on our computers. Now I don't know where anything is. Worse, “his” bit of the computer now has endless security traps and passwords. I've tried everything, including “Uma Thursday,” but nothing works. So there's no SEANJOURNALTEN.DOC, or if there is, I can't get at it. And for once, I'm eager to find out what's going on inside that head of his. I don't know why, can't begin to imagine why, but Sean has become obsessed with some silly thing that happened to him when he was at school. Some minor act of betrayal. He keeps wanting to talk about it, but I really can't be bothered to listen. Whenever he starts, I just tune out and think about … well, the other things.
I talked to Raymond about it. He was disappointed that he wouldn't be hearing any more about Sean and Uma but encouraged me to keep up my side of things. And even if he hadn't, I think that now I'm addicted. I've never been big on self-analysis. I do things; I don't dwell. I pay people like Raymond to dwell. But writing my thoughts down has proved unexpectedly interesting to me. I almost feel as if externalizing things gives me more control. I certainly understand more. Because there it is, in black and white. Me.
I told Raymond about kissing Ludo. He was annoyed (although he tried to hide it) that I'd left so early. I'm starting to wonder why he keeps his hands in his pockets all the time.
Had a charming lunch with Milo yesterday. We met in a famous old restaurant that pays Milo a small retainer to eat there to make the place seem a little less stuffy and a bit more, as they'd probably say, “with it.” They try to give you too much to eat, of course, most of it hacked from some poor beast, but the chairs are comfortable and the waiters are cute. They ev
en do that thing of pretending to be French, which went out everywhere else about 1995.
The comfort of the chairs is rather important to Milo. Ever since his “accident,” when that horrid little creature of his, Pippin, did something gross with a dildo made in the shape, according to Milo (although I think this may be one of his little fantasies), of Tony Blair's grinning countenance, he's been very particular about how and where he sits. He had an inflatable ring made by Bill Amberg with a lovely mauve nubuck cover, and he'd got all his famous clients to sign it, and if the seating doesn't strike him as soft enough, he whips it out and blows it up and makes a performance of gingerly settling down on it.
But here he didn't need the ring, which was a relief. I told him about Sean and his slut. Milo had always found Sean deeply uninteresting— he wasn't nearly butch enough to appeal to Milo's feminine side, nor was his campness the right sort of campness, being all about making a fuss and performance about small things, and not at all to do with where he liked to put his penis. If they ever abutted at parties, you could see Milo's face stretch as he suppressed yawns, his boredom tempered only by the anxiety that he was wasting vital networking and bitching time with this invisible man and perhaps a further hint of fear that the people who counted might think that they were friends!
“I don't know why you married him in the first place,” he said matter-of-factly, as he pointed a forkful of seared scallop toward his mouth.
“Because I loved him, of course,” I said.
Milo guffawed crudely.
“And besides,” I continued, “nobody else asked me. I was twenty-five, singleish, not desperate, but beginning to think. And you know how many straight men there are in our business. And anyway, even though you can't see it, he is good-looking and, when he wants to be, charming.”
“So you keep saying.”
“And it's nice, in a way, having someone not in fashion. He keeps me …”—I strung it out, savoring the faux earnestness of it all— “grounded.”
“Sounds to me like you're trying to convince yourself. Do I detect the merest hint of dissatisfaction beneath all this display of love? Don't you want the rest of that lobster?”
“Dig in. Unusually astute of you, Milo. Bit bored, that's all. And then this thing with the slut.”
“You're not really jealous are you? From what you were saying, he hasn't even fucked her. And does he know, by the way, that you've been reading his diary?”
“Not jealous, more annoyed. I'm sure he hasn't slept with her, and he probably won't, he's so lame. What was the other question?”
“The diary.”
“Oh, he may do. He's changed the computer system, and now I can't find where he's put his files. But I'd already got bored with it, once he stopped writing about me. Anyway, I've got other distractions now.”
Milo looked up from his plate. “Sounds interesting. Fashion or fucking?”
“Neither. So far. I've been seeing something of Ludo Moss” was how I phrased it.
Milo now put his fork down, which was quite a thing for Milo, the famous glutton.
“Ludo?”
His face was too complicated to read. I knew it wasn't politic to tell him about Ludo, but I wanted to, and that was that. He was hardly going to run off and tell Katie. They had been close until a couple of years ago, but around the time of Milo's accident, and his subsequent flight to India, things had cooled, and now they were hardly on speaking terms. But I did know that Milo had a thing for Ludo: a mad, unrequited longing. I supposed it was because Ludo was macho enough to make Milo want to melt into his arms. And now there were perplexing things happening with his face—interest, jealously, amusement.
“Yes. Nothing's … happened. Just a kiss. And what's a kiss?”
“Everything, if it's the right kind of kiss.” That was true. “And what about poor, poor Katie Castle? Don't you feel for her?”
“She can look after herself. And I haven't done anything, yet.”
“But you know you can, know you will.”
“I don't know if I can. I don't know if I will.”
“Do you want to?”
“Yes.”
“Then you will.”
“Don't be stupid. It's not as easy as that.”
“Face it, Celeste—you're beautiful. I don't normally tell people that unless it's business, but it would be plain silly to deny it. And I promise you, there's not a man alive who won't grasp at his chance of possessing beauty. It's the way we are. The problem is that beauty usually doesn't want to be grasped. But if it does—and by the sound of it, you do—then it's all as inevitable as a …”
“Greek tragedy?”
“What?”
“I saw one with Ludo. About a smelly boil.”
“I had one of those once. Turned out to be primary syph.”
“And there's Harry. I know I don't play the maternal card, but I do have feelings.”
“How is the little cherub?”
“Oh, he's lovely at the moment. He says things. And when I come in, he runs up to me and hurls himself into my arms. Sean says it's because he gets bored with him.”
“I'm not surprised. But no one's saying you should leave them. From my experience, an affair can keep things ticking over nicely back at home. It's the ones who bottle it all up who finally burst out, wreaking havoc everywhere. You know it's the sane thing. You know it's the European thing.”
“Why are you so concerned to see me stray with Ludo?”
“Just want you to be happy dear girl. And I want you to tell me all about it. You know he has a massive tool?”
“No, I didn't. How do you know?”
“Katie told me. Said it hurt, unless she was properly lubed up.”
“You're disgusting.”
And he was, but he also knew that saying what he said would fire my interest, my curiosity.
“So what's your next move?”
“I'm waiting for him to call.”
“He'll call. What then?”
“Then we'll see.”
“Don't be so coy. See what?”
“It's not easy. Where? When?”
“There are hotels, you know. I could get you a rate at The Hempel—they owe me a favor.”
That was enough. My head was full of images. I shook it.
“What about you, Milo? I feel we've been neglecting your love life.”
“My life is my love.”
“I'd work on that one—doesn't mean anything and doesn't even sound particularly witty.”
“Like you'd know. I've not really felt fired by anyone since Xerxes disappeared. I pop in to see Pippin at the institution every now and then, you know?”
“I didn't know. Very … magnanimous, after what he did to you.”
“There is still a bond between us. At least he loves me enough to hate me.”
“What do you talk about?”
“Not the incident. Too traumatic for both of us. We mainly play Ping-Pong, unless one of the other loonies has swallowed the ball.”
“So there's really been nobody new since Xerxes?”
“Well, I still go out, in case you haven't noticed. A boy has his needs. Picked up some plump little dumpling the other night. All hot and sweaty under his tweeds. He was dancing, looking like an old sow scratching herself on a wall. Said he worked for some crappy little auction house, Enderby's or something. Can't even remember his name … Cedric or Clarence or Cecil. I don't think I've ever had anyone quite so unprepossessing, but he had that air of desperation about him, so I knew he'd do whatever I told him to.”
“And what, exactly, was that?”
Milo laughed unpleasantly. “You don't want to know, but we began with rimming and finished up in the same area with a bit of felching.”
“Felching? Remind me.”
He told me.
“Poor Cecil.”
“Oh, he loved it.”
“How are things at Smack!?”
“Bit slow, post you-know-what. PR's often the
first thing to go, in a crisis, which is crazy because that's when the fools need it most. Had to let Sarenna go, but I had the feeling we'd become more of a hobby than anything else to her, since she married the banker. Veronica's been a treasure. You know I've made her co-director? Only way to stop her being poached. She saved the corporate side and keeps things ticking over in the office. Shame, if she weren't a woman, and dull as douche water, and ugly as a bulldog chewing a wasp, I might marry her. Make it a family business. Ah, the pudding trolley at last. It's my true love now, you know.”
The distinct bulge in the Prussian blue of his heavy silk shirt suggested that, for once, Milo was telling the truth.
We kissed good-bye as the doorman whistled taxis.
“Remember, you will tell me everything, won't you?”
“Yes, Milo, I promise. Exact dimensions. If it happens, which it won't.”
“It will.”
“It won't.”
Childishly, he insisted upon a final “It will” as he climbed in his taxi, and he slammed the door shut before I had the chance to reply. I wanted to run after him shouting “It won't, it won't,” but that would have been silly. Sometimes you have to admit defeat.
SEANJOURNALTWELVE.DOC
THREE BETRAYALS
It must have been the thing with Uma that brought them back. I hadn't thought about Mumford for a long, long time. Nor Chris. And that's odd, because, as Celeste keeps telling me, I'm a professional nostalgist. She's always pointing it out and saying “Here we go again” when I begin a sentence with “I once had this friend …” or “When I was at school, there was this …” or “Everything's rubbish now….”
Maybe it's a boy thing, because Ludo, Andrew, and Leo do it, too. Just maybe not as often. And maybe not as well. But we have in common the habit of explaining or highlighting or attacking something now, something here, by trawling back and finding an analogue from long ago, something from there and then. And not just the good stuff, either—the first drunks, the first kisses, the first palping of a pliant tit (although those; certainly those)—but the bad stuff, as long as it could be made funny or poignant or useful. So Andrew will illustrate some recent humiliation or fiasco at work by talking about the time he managed to hack up into his mouth from his bronchitic chest the mother of all greenies and then, rather than simply spitting it onto the playground like anyone else, he gathered a crowd and tried to fire it backward over his shoulder with a violent toss of the head and simultaneous flexing of the spine. But the beast in his mouth was simply too viscous and vigorously resisted expectoration. The result was a huge green slug deposited on a line running between the corner of his mouth and his eyebrow, with a sound track of jeers, sneers, slaps, and goffs, as the boys and girls of 3J showed their appreciation.
The Marriage Diaries Page 12
