Bad Behaviour

by Liz Byrski

  They fall about laughing at themselves, and then Tom slaps Richard on the shoulder. ‘Happy New Year, new century,’ he says, ‘I hope it’s a good one for you.’ He holds out his hand, and Richard shakes it with both of his.

  ‘You too, Tom, all the best, all the very best.’

  And they are serious for a moment, fleetingly embarrassed to find themselves half-naked in the bathroom being serious, wordlessly acknowledging how fond they are of each other.

  ‘Er, yes . . . must get on,’ Tom says, unhooking his dressing gown from the back of the door. ‘I’ll get started on the breakfast. Bacon sandwiches, I thought.’

  ‘What about Julia?’ Richard asks, pulling a toothbrush out of his wash bag, which is standing on the corner of the bath.

  ‘Gone to the hospice to see Hilary; won’t be back for a while, she says. I’m in the doghouse.’

  ‘The Algarve?’

  Tom nods. ‘She thinks I want to cart her off to some geriatric Stepford Wives enclave. Trouble is, she won’t bloody listen. All I want is to get some nice little place, somewhere warm, with a glorious view, so we can pop over from time to time and get some sun. Maybe you can make her see sense.’

  Richard puts the plug in the basin and turns on the taps. ‘It’d be the first time ever,’ he says. ‘Sounds brilliant to me. Take me instead.’

  Tom laughs and walks out of the bathroom. Richard hears him singing softly in the bedroom, in French, the ‘Marseillaise’ of all things, word perfect, accent perfect.

  He’s an odd cove, Tom, Richard thinks, even though he’s now not only his brother-in-law but his best friend. Hugely intelligent, socially progressive – even a lifetime in banking hasn’t driven him to the right. He looks around the bathroom at all the signs of two people living an intimate life – the toothbrushes, towels, medications, perfume and aftershave – and he thinks of how he has watched their relationship grow over the years. He has seen them fight and make up, challenge and support each other, laugh and cry together, and he envies it. More than anything, he thinks, he envies the trust and the companionship. It must, Richard believes, be wonderful to know that there is at least one person in the world for whom you always come first.

  Years ago he had greeted with considerable cynicism Julia’s tale of how Tom had seen her on the television news coverage of the peace camp and raced out to Greenham Common to find her. But, as he watched Tom’s relentless efforts to wear down her resistance until she agreed to marry him, he knew he was watching love, once lost, being rekindled until it burst into a beautiful flame. Greenham Common, he thinks now – well, Tom certainly acted then and it won him what he wanted.

  Richard splashes his face with water, pats it with a towel, considers trimming his beard and decides against it. ‘The thing is,’ he says aloud to himself, ‘that Tom thinks about everything but does nothing. While you, my friend, think about nothing and rush headlong at things and crash into walls – particularly when it comes to women.’

  A few weeks earlier the prospect of spending Christmas with Martin Gilbert and his wife in Vermont, surrounded by loving couples, suddenly seemed more than he could cope with. So he’d apologised and mumbled something about needing to go home to see his father. Then he’d rung Julia and asked if he could come for Christmas as it was bloody freezing in New York.

  ‘And I suppose you think it’s gloriously tropical here,’ she’d said. ‘Actually, the central heating’s on the blink. Tom was supposed to be getting the man in to fix it but it’s taken him three days to think about making the call, so I’ve done it myself.’

  ‘So, you don’t mind, then?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Of course not. It’ll be lovely and you can talk Tom out of his latest scheme, which involves us living in Portugal, trotting from one trattoria to the other eating tapas and patting the locals on the head.’

  ‘Do they have trattorias in Portugal? That’s Italy.’

  ‘Whatever. Wherever it is, I’m not going. You can talk some sense into him.’

  So, here I am, Richard thinks, as he pulls on the very nice navy blue cashmere sweater that Julia gave him for Christmas, commissioned by both to talk sense into the other. This triggers a feeling of emptiness and he sits on the bed and studies the pale shapes of his cold bare feet on the carpet. They play this game from time to time, Tom and Julia; this pretence of being at loggerheads when, in fact, they are devoted to each other, lucky buggers. And, as always, he is alone and, frankly, pretty bloody lonely most of the time, thanks to his ability to shoot himself in the foot when it comes to women. His mind whizzes through a series of flashbacks ending, as always, with his ruthless actions after Zoë’s baby was born. If only he’d given it more time; if only he’d gone back to Delphi Street again instead of just waiting and hoping she’d call. Instead, he’d convinced himself that she’d found Harry, and that Agnes, learning about the baby, had left. He’d tortured himself with images of Zoë and Harry together; sometimes he even thought he saw them pushing a pram or carrying the baby that should have been his.

  Martin had been offered a juicy contract in New York and was leaving the BBC. On the spur of the moment, Richard, needing to get away from London, had applied to join the foreign correspondents’ team. A few months later, he was in Vietnam, discovering that there was nothing like a war zone to take your mind off your failures. It worked until he got too close to a land mine and was sent home to hospital in England.

  ‘I can go back as soon as you like,’ he’d told the foreign editor once he was declared fit for work.

  ‘No way,’ Mike Lennox had told him.

  ‘But I was doing a good job . . .’

  ‘You were wounded, Richard, quite badly wounded; largely because you refused to follow the rules and took yourself and the cameraman into a fucking minefield. Or have you forgotten that?’

  ‘But I’m okay now. The medics said . . .’

  ‘Look, just shut the fuck up. You’re not going back; the BBC, the union, they’d castrate me. You go where you’re sent, and I’m sending you to Washington.’

  ‘Washington? I thought maybe the Middle East . . .’ Richard began.

  Lennox raised his eyebrows. ‘I’m sure you did. But you’re going to Washington because we need someone politically astute there, and because the only minefields in Washington are political ones.’

  He’d wondered how he would cope, whether he was ready to have time to think about anything other than survival. But at least Washington wouldn’t be dull. And then, a few days before he was due to fly out of London, he’d bumped into Claire, at the opening of a photo-journalism exhibition, and learned what Zoë had learned years earlier in Glasgow.

  ‘Harry? Dead?’ he’d said. ‘I can barely believe it. I assumed that he and Zoë . . .’ His heart was pounding furiously at the sudden possibility of seeing her again. ‘So, is Zoë still in London?’

  Claire shook her head. ‘They went back to Perth last year.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Zoë and Daniel.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said feeling stupid. ‘And she’s happy there?’

  ‘I think so,’ Claire said. ‘She’s got a job and Daniel’s started school.’

  Richard nodded, crestfallen. ‘That’s good news, then,’ he said. ‘Well, give her my best next time you write.’ If only he’d gone back just one more time.

  His feet are really cold now, and Richard gets up and finds some clean socks. There is a tantalising smell of bacon wafting up from the kitchen, and Tom has stopped the ‘Marseillaise’ and started on the nostalgia medley he’s known to break into at parties: Sinatra, Perry Como, Tony Bennett. He has an excellent voice; a strong tenor that Julia professes to remember rising above the sounds of riots in Paris. As he runs down the stairs to the kitchen, Tom launches into ‘Make Someone Happy’, which stops him dead. He is assailed once more by the terrible emptiness that gripped him in the bedroom. He has only made any woman happy for a very brief period of time, he realises; as they grow to know him better, h
e makes them very miserable. Richard hesitates at the foot of the stairs, trying to control something that feels like a sob building in his chest, and then strolls into the kitchen just as Tom reaches the bit about love being the answer.

  ‘For Chrissakes, Tom,’ Richard says. ‘Perry-bloody-Como on the first day of a new century?’

  ‘Who better?’ Tom says, flipping bacon onto slices of thick toast.

  ‘Barry McGuire’d be a start.’

  Tom puts a plate on the table, and obliges by changing key and launching back into song. Richard joins him now, reaching as he does so into the top cupboard and pulling out a bottle of whisky.

  And together, hips and shoulders swaying, they circle the kitchen table, singing about being old enough to fight but not vote, about the world exploding in violence, until they reach the final line of the chorus and, at this point, all movement stops and they sing louder now, drumming their hands on the table in time to the music, shouting the final words ‘. . . eve of destruction’. And then they stop.

  ‘Bloody dreadful song for a new century,’ Tom says, sitting down at the table.

  ‘Even more relevant now than it was in sixty-five.’

  ‘So, shall we slit our wrists now or later?’

  ‘Later, I think,’ Richard says, thinking that now would be as good a time as any. He pours himself a shot of whisky and puts the glass down alongside his bacon sandwich.

  ‘Bit early for that, isn’t it?’ Tom asks, biting into his sandwich.

  Richard tosses off the drink and leans back in his chair. ‘Never too early,’ he says, ‘or too late, come to that.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  Rye – New Year’s Day 2000

  ‘The Algarve is probably just another of those plans that never go anywhere, Julia,’ Hilary says. ‘Best to ignore it, I think.’

  Julia nods. ‘You’re probably right,’ she says, ‘I’m overreacting.’ And adds, but only to herself, I’m overreacting because I’m watching my best friend die and I don’t know how I’ll cope when she’s gone.

  ‘Displacement activity,’ Hilary says softly. She seems particularly weak this morning.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘All this,’ she says, waving an extremely thin and pale arm around the room, and speaking even more slowly than usual. ‘Me, this place; I think it’s getting to you. I love seeing you but maybe you shouldn’t come so often.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Julia says, ‘I want to be here, to be with you.’

  ‘I know, dear, but it’s New Year, you didn’t need to come. I didn’t expect it.’

  ‘I come because I need to come for me,’ Julia says. ‘I know that’s terribly selfish. I should be coming for you and part of me is, but not all of me.’

  Hilary nods and closes her eyes. Sometimes Julia’s pain is harder for her to bear than the pain of her illness, which is controlled, to some extent, by medication. ‘I’d like to think of your doing something pleasant, restorative for yourself,’ she says. ‘You looked after me for so long that you must be exhausted.’

  ‘Seeing you is restorative,’ Julia says. ‘And New Year is important; the time to think of the future, to be positive, the prospect of spring. You know.’

  Hilary, knowing she will not see the spring and not much more of the winter, smiles and lets it go. They have this conversation far too often. She would prefer to reminisce and to tell Julia how much their friendship has meant to her: how she has been the daughter Hilary never had, that she doesn’t know how she could have carried on after Eric’s death, had it not been for her. But Julia doesn’t want to have that conversation, to hear its note of finality. Tom is better at this, Hilary thinks; perhaps because he is older and therefore no stranger to the sense of time closing in. It is a relief to talk to Tom, although Hilary feels horribly disloyal thinking this.

  ‘Tom’ll be over tomorrow,’ Julia says. ‘He was sorting through his old photos and found some of him when he was in the choir at Eric’s church, when he was about fifteen. He’s bringing them to show you.’

  ‘That’ll be lovely,’ Hilary says. ‘He was a sweet boy; I was always fond of him. Things turned out all right for both of you in the end, didn’t they?’ Hilary closes her eyes and reaches for Julia’s hand. ‘I think I need to sleep now.’

  Julia gets up. ‘Yes, of course,’ she says. ‘Sorry for dumping all my problems on you.’ She leans over and kisses Hilary on the cheek.

  Hilary, eyes still closed, lifts her hand to touch Julia’s face. ‘I love you very much, Julia; you do know that, don’t you? I couldn’t have wished for a better friend than you’ve been.’

  ‘Still am, I hope,’ Julia says briskly. ‘You rest now. Tom’ll be over tomorrow and I’ll see you in a couple of days.’

  The sun is forcing its way through the clouds as Julia leaves the hospice, its narrow rays casting dazzling shafts of light onto the snow. She pauses by the car, wondering whether she really does want to go for a long walk on her own on the first day of the new century. What she’d really like to do is go home and curl up on the couch with a book, with Tom in his usual chair with his own book, and a bottle of wine; or just listen to music, something magnificent such as Haydn’s ‘Mass in Time of War’ or Beethoven’s ‘4th Piano Concerto’. That is the wonderful thing about being with Tom, she thinks, he doesn’t talk for the sake of it. Their conversations are long and intense but so too are their silences. But Tom and Richard together become a double act, bouncing off each other, engaging in rowdy discussions, bursting into song, or doing funny voices: Basil Fawlty, Corporal Jones and Captain Mainwaring, or the Goons. Julia sighs. She loves having the two of them in the house, but an outbreak of New Year Goonery is not what she needs today. Instead of driving back into Rye, she goes on to Camber.

  It’s a miserable place, of course, Camber; Tom says Mike Leigh should set one of his depressing dramas there. It does have an incredible beach though; one that can make you forget the few dreary shops packed with tourist tat, the holiday camp that looks more like a prison, and the surly youths on motorbikes, chewing gum and trying to chat up girls with bare midriffs and breasts blue with cold.

  Julia parks, switches off her mobile phone, and picks a path over the dunes to the kilometres of flat sand stretching left, right and way out to the sea, which now, at low tide, is barely visible. On this beach, you can walk for ages before reaching the water’s edge, and then keep walking on and on before the sea reaches your knees; it’s too cold for paddling now, of course. The snow has started again, and the beach is pale and misty, eerie as a moonscape. There are just three couples, walking briskly, anoraks zipped tightly, their hoods protecting their ears from the wind. But Julia wants the wind and the snow, its excoriating bite on her face, the moaning rush in her ears. So, without a hood and only sunglasses to protect her eyes from snow and sand, she strides vigorously, inhaling huge breaths of briny air.

  Hilary loves it here too – or did when she was well enough to enjoy it, which now seems a painfully long time ago. Julia knows she is not coping well with Hilary’s illness, that she picks on Tom. She is aware that she is making Tom’s Algarve plan into a big thing so that she doesn’t have to think about the prospect that in just a matter of weeks Hilary will be gone. Despite her many interests and commitments, it is this friendship and, later, her marriage to Tom that have been the sure footholds of her life since she left Simon. It was to Hilary that she had turned when she left her first marriage, and Julia wonders whether, without her, she would have coped with building a very different life.

  She stops walking now, looking out through the fine snow to the Channel, wondering about Simon, now head of the Branston empire, still living in Paris but in a spectacular house near the Bois de Boulogne. Six months ago, she and Tom had been invited to Simon’s third wedding, to a Swedish model less than half his age. They’d declined, but Julia, while getting her hair cut a month or so later, had chanced across a copy of Hello! magazine with pictures of the wedding and of the happy couple relaxing i
n their beautiful Paris home. She had to admit they looked good together: Simon, hair now silver, with the same dazzling blue eyes and his usual debonair stance, his arm around the waist of the beautiful blonde. She had studied the photographs with, what she thought might be, the air of a benevolent aunt. But, despite all the evidence of Simon’s satisfying and successful life since she fled the Branston coop, thoughts of him always revive her latent guilt at having married him for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘Are you really sure about this, Julia?’ Hilary had asked when she had tearfully announced that she was going to leave Simon. Hilary, who was living in the small apartment to which she had moved after Eric’s death three years earlier, had drawn her inside, and sat her down with a cup of tea and a box of tissues. ‘It’s a very big step. You do need to be sure that there is no alternative.’

  ‘I’m sure,’ Julia had said through her tears, ‘I have to, Hil, I can’t go on like this. I feel as though I’m living a double life. There’s so much I want to do, and the campaigns we’re working on are just part of it. You know how it is; the world is changing but Simon simply doesn’t get it. And the thing is that, despite what he says, he doesn’t want to get it. I can’t live that life any longer, I want more. But Simon wants more too. He wants children and you know how I feel about that. I can’t do the whole mother thing.’

  ‘Then, when you’re ready to leave, you must come here,’ Hilary had said. ‘Day or night, there’s a place for you here with me.’ And she had pressed a spare key into Julia’s hand before she left.

  What had made it harder for Julia was that she still cared for Simon, but joining the Jeunes Femmes had changed her. As she talked with women whose lives were so very different from her own, and others, who, like her, were struggling with new ideas that placed them at odds with everything they thought they knew about themselves, Julia recognised that her days with Simon were numbered.

  ‘You see, Julia,’ Minette had said to her the next day, when she had wept in the Jeunes Femmes office. ‘When you understand these things that are political, but are also about who you are, you cannot go back.’