by Frances Vick
‘It’s lovely,’ said Jenny firmly.
‘I love trifle. It’s proper school dinner stuff, isn’t it?’
‘So, at boarding school, David, was it all a bit Harry Potter? All dormitories and gowns and… and… wizard orgies and, OK, I haven’t read any Harry Potter, so I don’t know what I’m talking about…’ Freddie trailed off.
Wizard orgies? Jenny mouthed at him.
‘It was OK,’ David said shortly.
‘Did you miss your parents?’ Freddie leaned forward. ‘I always felt a bit sorry for the kids at St Columbus that boarded, but they were probably perfectly happy. I mean their parents could have been absolute bastards. Their kids were bad enough.’
David flinched slightly. ‘I missed them at first, but then I got used to it,’ he replied quietly.
‘Well, you were that bit older, weren’t you? When you’re older you can cope better with things like that... separation. I suppose—’ Freddie reached for the wine bottle and pulled it towards himself with his fingertips. ‘It’s all about what you’re used to – shit!’ The bottle tipped, rolled and fell. Freddie leaped up, gesturing widely with his too-full glass splashing yet more wine in a wide arc. It splattered over the table, over himself, onto the sofa, and onto the floor. ‘Shit! Shit, sorry!’ He drunkenly backed away from the mess, and yet more wine ran down each trouser leg, puddling further into the very antique-looking rug. ‘Oh god, do you have a cloth?’
David was up, inspecting the rug. He made an assessing hissing sound, and shook his head.
‘I’m sorry! Can I… if I get a cloth?’ Freddie said weakly, but David was already on his way to the kitchen.
Jenny knelt down, patting the stain with a napkin. It spread like blood through the fine fibres of the rug. ‘I think it’s silk or something,’ she said, and looked at Freddie. ‘Careful, you’re still dripping.’
‘Is it bad?’ Freddie stepped back onto the parquet and winced. ‘It’s probably an heirloom or something, isn’t it? Shit!’
‘Yes it’s bad! Why’re you being so weird?’ She was still on her hands and knees. She sounded angry. ‘Seriously, stop drinking.’
When David rushed in with a bowl of soapy water and various stain removers, she and David dabbed, tutted and murmured at the mess. ‘Can he take them off?’ David indicated Freddie’s dripping trousers. ‘At the top of the stairs’ – dab dab dab – ‘chest of drawers? There’s some of Dad’s old trousers in there.’
‘Freddie!’ Jenny hissed, as if David’s words needed translating. ‘Top of the stairs. Trousers!’
‘What, in a room at the top of the stairs, or…?’ Freddie asked, but David didn’t reply. Jenny gave him a severe look, and went back to pressing anxiously at the stain. They looked for all the world as if they were resuscitating a patient.
Freddie, pinching the thighs of his jeans away from the skin, backed out of the room and made his way up the stairs, head swimming, and feeling like an idiot. To Friendship. David likes you, he does he does, so please come to tea? And what happens? Things get weird, things get worse and the clumsy sidekick runs to the wings, reappears in a dead man’s trousers. Slow handclap. Exit left.
He couldn’t see any chest of drawers at the top of the stairs. It had to be in one of the rooms. He pushed open the nearest door and walked into a large, musty-smelling room that was mostly empty, except for two packing crates by the window, a bulky 1930s wardrobe and a CD player, its dusty plug still in the ancient-looking socket above the skirting board. Freddie walked slowly to the wardrobe, opened it. The spotted mirror on the inside door reflected his pink and white face and wine-soaked jeans. There were a few old suits hanging up, and Freddie took the nearest one down. It smelled a bit mildewy, but the trousers looked as if they’d fit. Maybe.
As he jumped and wiggled, trying to fasten them, he managed to knock into the wardrobe. A couple of hand weights rolled out onto the wooden floor with a clunk. He grabbed them, and put them back, wedging the two between an old gym bag stuffed with paper and a small cardboard case marked ‘Precious Memories!’ in one of those old Letrasets.
Precious Memories? That was intriguing. And, after all, he wasn’t in any hurry to go back downstairs and talk to David…
He tried to take a moment to think. Fred, you’re pissed. Maybe scrabbling about in people’s personal possessions isn’t the best idea? He crouched down, the wool of dead man's trousers straining over his thighs. Just go back downstairs, apologise, switch to water – his fingers unlatched the catch – buy a new rug, if needs be. Yes, that’s it, go back downstairs and offer to buy another... Jesus, are we really doing this? Fred? Really?
‘Of course we are,’ he muttered to himself.
‘Precious Memories!’ was divided into three sections with stiff corrugated cardboard, cut specially to fit, and each section was packed with seemingly meaningless objects. A compass. A pink Post-it note. A very old newspaper clipping about fly-tipping. A lady’s chiffon scarf marred by a wine stain. Nothing precious, all trash. It was all pretty boring. Why keep it then?
He closed the lid, shut the wardrobe door and wandered over to the nearest packing case to see if there was a bag or something he could put his wet jeans in, but it just seemed to be full of paper, old binders and loose photographs. He dug deeper, pulled out an empty holdall and shoved his trousers in it.
Now he had nothing to do but go back downstairs and face David.
Knowing he was deliberately dawdling, he looked out of the window. The room faced the back garden. The faint indentations of what had once been the foundations of a building scarred the grass, and, just beyond, what looked like a wooden cross was planted at the end of the shrubbery. It had something written on it, but Freddie couldn’t read it from this distance.
The cross, the empty room, ‘Precious Memories!’, the curtainless windows… it was all depressing. It was also sinister. Uncanny. The whole house was strange. David was strange. Admit it. Admit it to yourself. Yes you’re drunk, yes you’ve behaved badly, but... but David. There’s something about David. Jenny can’t see it, but he’s not right.
He walked slowly out of the room and onto the landing, feeling heavy with this new, fully admitted knowledge. There was something about David, something wrong and rotten at the core of him…
He was so absorbed in his thoughts that, when he felt the hand on his arm, he cried out in shock.
Catherine Crane was standing, thin and paper pale, by the bottom step, half hidden in the shadowy corridor. Her hand was firm, almost steely. The quilted dressing gown drooped on her frame like a shroud, and when she smiled she looked like a bird with teeth.
‘Mrs Crane?’
She held out her other hand to him, placed it on his chest, and her grip softened. Her eyes, he noticed, were the same light grey-blue as David’s, but not as cold, and filled with love.
‘We missed you. We didn’t want you to be away for so long.’ She clung to Freddie’s arms, swayed.
‘Are you all right? Mrs Crane?’
Now she was leading him falteringly down the corridor. She smelled of Chanel No. 5 and denture cream and something else… something not fresh. ‘It’s all about presentation, isn’t it? Clothes maketh the man.’
‘You mean the trousers? I’m sorry, I had a bit of an accident. David said it was OK if I borrowed these.’
‘No matter what anyone says, I know it was an accident.’ She told him firmly.
‘And I’m so sorry about the rug. I’ll fix everything, get everything clean I promise,’
‘You feel better, you do, now, don’t you?’ She stopped, gazed at him, dim eyes piteous with love. ‘What’s passed is passed? Mmmm? Hazlewood works wonders.’
Finally Freddie realised that she really didn’t know who she was talking to. ‘Shall I go and get David for you?’ Freddie took a little step backwards, but one thin hand tugged at his elbow with surprising strength.
‘I ate at the club,’ she told him firmly. And then she began to shake.
&n
bsp; ‘Fred?’ Jenny came around the corner. ‘Where’ve you been?’
‘Finding trousers. And then David’s mum—’
‘Catherine?’ Jenny came forward. ‘Are you OK?’
She nodded at Freddie again, saying: ‘I ate at the club.’ A stream of mustard coloured urine ran down one leg and puddled in her slipper.
‘Oh lord, can you get David? Fred? Go and get David.’ Jenny was already cradling Catherine by one elbow and steering her back towards her room. ‘Catherine? Let’s get you cleaned up.’
‘I missed him,’ Catherine told her. ‘But Hazlewood worked wonders.’
‘Yes. Yes, I know. Let’s get you comfy… Fred? Go and get David, will you?’
Freddie ran to the sitting room, but David wasn’t there. He found him in the kitchen, frowning over his phone. Cloths, stained pink with wine, were scattered on the draining board, like so many shot birds. ‘David, your mum—’
‘What?’ David paled and came forward. ‘What’s happened?’
‘She’s… she needed to go to the toilet and well, there’s another rug to clean, I’m afraid.’
‘Oh God.’ David put the phone down on the work surface and shouldered past him. ‘I’m sorry!’ he said.
‘Oh no, it’s not, I mean, I hope she’s all right,’ Freddie called weakly at his back, and followed a few paces behind, his dead-man’s flares flapping around his wine-stained ankles.
Jenny was sitting with Catherine on the tufted pink chaise longue, murmuring empty conversation. The older woman seemed to be almost asleep, her greying hair nestled and mingled with Jenny’s tawny curls, and the fabric of her nightdress fluttered with each tiny breath. Jenny looked up at David and smiled. ‘She’s OK. Just got a bit confused, that’s all.’
‘I’m sorry.’ David sounded close to tears. ‘I’m so sorry that—’
Jenny shook her head. ‘What’s to be sorry about? It’s OK. Everything’s OK.’
David let out a painful noise; an angry sob.
‘Catherine? David’s going to sit with you now, is that OK? Here he is now.’ Jenny ever so gently eased Catherine’s head off her shoulder and swapped places with David. David, his face averted, stretched one arm across his mother’s shoulders, mechanically. Both Jenny and Freddie tiptoed out of the room, not looking at each other until they were safely back in the sitting room.
‘Wow,’ Freddie whispered then.
‘I feel so sorry for him,’ Jenny whispered back.
‘She was talking to me like she thought I was him.’
Jenny nodded. ‘Same to me. Poor woman. Poor David. Look, let’s clean up a bit, fill the dishwasher and stuff, and then we should probably leave.’ She gazed at his trousers. ‘Wow. That’s all you could find?’
‘Dead Dad trousers.’
‘Where are your jeans?’
‘In a bag. I left it at the bottom of the stairs.’
They quietly cleared the sitting room of dishes, rolled everything back to the kitchen on the dessert tray, and began stacking the dishwasher. By the time they’d finished, David was at the door. His face was pale, and there were small red dots around his eye sockets, as if he’d been crying. He said: ‘I can’t apologise enough.’
Jenny came forward. ‘You don’t have to. Come on, David, if anyone understands it’s me, right?’
‘I just wanted everything to be perfect.’ He swallowed his words. ‘It’s so important that you—’
‘David,’ she took his hand, ‘you don’t have to worry. About anything. Please don’t? OK?’
He nodded, but he kept his head bowed.
The phone he’d left on the work surface rang, but he didn’t make any move to pick it up. So Freddie did instead. Andreena. Why was Andreena calling David?
Jenny took the phone off him. ‘Hi, Dree. Listen, I can’t really talk now, can I...’
And Freddie realised, with a start, that the phone he’d seen David looking through only a few minutes before wasn’t his at all – it was Jenny’s – and something in the atmosphere cracked, like hot water poured into a cut-glass bowl, and only Freddie and David could hear it.
David disappeared, then came back with the holdall. ‘You can keep the bag,’
‘OK,’ Freddie answered dazedly
‘Everything in that room is rubbish.’ David said then. ‘Next time you come it’ll all be cleared away. Burnt.’ He thrust the bag at him. ‘You’re not driving.’ It was a statement rather than a question.
‘Don’t worry, he won’t be,’ Jenny told him. ‘That was Dree, she wants to meet you. Properly.’
‘I’ll be very glad to,’ David said stiffly. Then his face relaxed, and he smiled. ‘I’ll make a meal, she can come over here.’ He reached for Freddie’s free hand. ‘Nice to see you again.’
‘Mmmmm.’
‘And don’t worry about the mess you made, it’s all fixable.’
Freddie couldn’t do anything but nod dumbly back.
David stood at the front door, watching them get into the car, watching Jenny gingerly pull the seat in, and frown at the dashboard. Just as they were about to turn, David walked leisurely to the passenger window, rapped on the window. He smiled.
‘Be careful.’
‘Oh, we will, don’t worry.’ Jenny was worriedly checking her mirrors. ‘I’m too much of a nervous driver to be anything else.’
Then he backed away, and held one hand up, stiff and still in the air.
They stayed silent until they were out of the village and on the main road. Jenny was nervy and preoccupied, prone to making sudden, crunching gear changes and fearful glances in the rear-view mirror. Freddie sat in the passenger seat feeling guilty, feeling fearful, and still quite drunk.
‘OK, so that was... kind of awful.’ he said eventually.
Jenny flicked on the indicator, but managed to put windscreen wipers on instead. ‘No. No, it’s fine. David wasn’t angry or anything. Can you push something? I don’t know how to turn this off.’
‘When I went to the kitchen, you know, after the thing with his mum?’
‘God, I hope she’s all right,’ she murmured.
‘In the kitchen? I saw David—’
‘That rug too. I hope the rug’s all right. Do I take a left here? Fred?’
‘Yes. Left. Well, I saw him looking through your phone.’ He said this last bit in a rush.
Jenny made the left, sighed. ‘God, I hate motorways… it’s the joining them that scares me. And the lorries – look at this guy! Freddie, should I let him pass or what?’
‘Did you hear me? I saw David looking through your phone. In the kitchen.’
Jenny frowned in the mirror, harried, a bit exasperated. ‘No, you didn’t, don’t be silly.’
‘He was though! And when I saw him he just kind of looked at me.’
‘God, how pissed are you anyway?’ Her eyebrows crumpled together. ‘David and I have the same type of phone, you know. It was his phone you saw, not mine.’
‘No, honestly, Jen, it wasn’t. He was looking through it, and he put it down when I came in, and that was the same phone Andreena called. I know it was yours. I’m positive.’
‘You’re pissed is what you are,’ she muttered.
‘And what about this – that picture of you? The one I took in Turkey with you in the sarong?’ His voice rose. ‘I saw it on David’s Facebook page when I friended him, a few months ago and, get this, as soon as I friended him he took it down.’ He stopped, looked at her eagerly. ‘So how did he have that picture on his wall before he’d even met you?’
Jenny frowned. ‘What wall? His Facebook wall?’
‘No. Well kind of, on his wall wall. It was in a frame, hanging up just behind his head on his profile picture. I’m positive.’
‘Well if you were that positive, why didn’t you tell me at the time?’ she asked reasonably.
‘I don’t know.’ He hated how hesitant and lame he sounded. ‘I maybe wasn’t that sure, but then I saw him looking through your phone, and it m
ade me sure.’ He paused, got nothing from her set profile, and went on excitedly, knowing on some level that he was doing exactly the wrong thing. ‘And, he’s so jealous of Matt, too! Banging on about getting a lock on your door and everything.’
‘You were worried about that too though!’
‘Ah! No. David told you I was worried, but when you were out of the room it was him that was telling me how worried he was.’
Jenny shook her head. ‘Basic syntax, Fred.’
‘He told me he’d had Claudine de-clawed!’ Freddie said wildly.
‘Fred—’
‘And your family pictures: when you said about not having any photos, he got really angry—’
‘He didn’t get angry; he was surprised, that’s all.’ She sounded stern now. ‘He thought it was sad. It is sad. You said it was sad.’ She slowed, took the motorway exit. After a long silence she said, ‘Why’re you doing this? No, wait, I know why you’re doing this.’
‘I’m worried about you, that’s all. Jen? David… there’s something not right about him. The things he says, and he twists things. Like saying I was worried about Matt, I told him to buy you those clothes. He’s weird Jen. I don’t want him to be, but he is and I’m scared for you.’
She didn’t reply but shook her head with such quiet rage that Freddie shut up like a clam. They didn’t exchange another word until they’d arrived at his flat.
‘I’ve sobered up now,’ he said. ‘I can drop you back at yours if you want? Or why don’t you stay here?’
‘College work to do,’ she said tightly, not looking at him, turning to leave.
‘OK. I’ll call you tomorrow? Or you call me?’ he called.
She didn’t respond, carried on walking quickly away, angry fists in her pockets.
‘Jen! I’m sorry.’
She didn’t look back.
It was getting dark, and the cold air bit. It would take her ages to walk home. He almost got in the car with an idea of driving around until he found her, persuading her to come back, but, in the end, he decided against it. Despite what he’d told her, he was still a bit drunk, and couldn’t be sure of his instincts. He thought about Jenny going back to her grim flat. He imagined David calling her, all sobriety and care; he imagined her apologising for him – ‘Freddie is protective, that’s all’ – imagined David’s measured response, something along the lines of: ‘It’s wonderful that he respects you so much’, or some such phrase packed with hurt and covert dislike… he’d sound so dignified and restrained, making Freddie seem even more childish and hysterical by comparison. There was something wrong with David – something uncanny, unconvincing. There was something condescending in his devotion to Jenny. How could he love her, and lie to her? How could he love her and loathe her friend? It was a strange devotion if it was tinged with contempt. But Jenny couldn’t see it. She was too close. Freddie knew he could have made her see things his way if he’d just… handled it better. But he wouldn’t give up. He couldn’t. Jenny – sweet, brave, Jenny. Outwardly cynical, inwardly too-trusting, Jenny needed him.
