On the Tube an American family got divided by the train doors. Richard was standing in the doorwell. He was the first person to think to manually prise open the doors that had clamped the buggy the mother was pushing. The little boy from the buggy was already in the carriage and had begun a panic-dance. The father was on the platform with the couple’s daughter, who was older than the boy. The doors partially opened, then attempted to close again. The mother was determined to get them all in. The father was for getting the family back on the platform. There was shouting over the pre-recorded instruction to stand clear. Richard let go and moved to calm the screaming boy as the doors again clamped the buggy, and the father took up the prising.
‘Come out, come out,’ cried the father.
‘Get in,’ cried the mother. ‘We’re going.’
Make your plans as you will – career plans, family, travels to Timbuktu, to a dingy flat in Clapham, or from Waterloo Station to South Kensington – but life was full of rogue incidents, some of which required radical action. They were more out than in. ‘Out,’ barked Richard, and propelled the agitated boy towards the mother, who was now trying to force an entry. ‘Out is best,’ Richard shouted as he pressed the boy down into the buggy and joined the father again in pulling apart of the doors, which finally opened wide. The family was reunited on the platform. Whacked senseless, they stared into the carriage interior at the bold Richard.
The doors closed properly. The train pulled out of the station. Richard looked about at his fellow passengers, who graciously made no eye contact – save one, an elderly black gent, who nodded his approval. For that Richard was hugely grateful. The acknowledgement of strangers – that would be his only salvation in this new life he was leading.
He was sweating profusely. His limbs had gone weak. The incident had revealed to him just how tightly wound he was. He needed to change at the Piccadilly Line, but got off at the wrong station. Cursing and stamping and feeling light-headed, he made his way back via a pedestrian tunnel. He thought he might have to throw himself against the concave tiles and slide to the ground, but was saved by a rush of cool air as he turned a corner and shambled down a flight of stairs.
Practising stillness on the Piccadilly Line train, he broke his trance to use his nitro-glycerin spray, though he knew he shouldn’t, as the danger had passed.
Take-off was delayed. Pilot and co-pilot had been grounded in a thunderstorm at Munich Airport, but would be on board soon. Richard looked at his trusty watch, but it had stopped. He had forgotten to wind it. Not good for a man seeking salvation.
‘Newspaper, sir?’
‘No thanks.’
‘Are you the rubbish man?’ the little boy in the adjacent seat asked the air steward.
‘Yes, I am,’ he replied. ‘That’s one of my jobs.’
Richard wound his watch. He wouldn’t let the boy claim their shared arm-rest. For the entire fight he kept his backbone straight, elbows extended, and feet planted firmly on the floor. He resisted at first, but eventually let his eyes drift up the brightly coloured map in the panel above that showed the British Isles and a bit of France, and their enormous aeroplane tracking like an atrophied bluebottle. The map changed to show the British Isles, all of Europe and a great hunk of Africa, with various cities marked as far south as Dar es Salaam. He’d only be in the air for fifty-five minutes. How far could they go wrong?
‘A drink, sir?’
‘Yes please.’
He was going back to Gloria on a full short-haul jet clutching his car keys in his pocket. Bringing her or not bringing her his ruinous story, he didn’t know yet. Oh, and that job with a good and reputable engineering firm he’d been about to chase after: he’d definitely lie about his health to get the post. Good to discover he had no qualms about that. Getting the car out of the multi-storey in Dun Laoghaire was going to cost a fucking fortune – not to mention the taxi fare from the airport to Dun Laoghaire. Things were looking up.
The white wine in the plastic glass was lukewarm, but he was having a second. And maybe a third. It went down quickly with a straight back. Virginia was grieving, yes. She was grieving. Rome with Gloria. Enough in the bank to see them through to the new job. It would all work out, except in the end.
He was retracing his steps, just as he had done when bringing back the chair from the dump. Good man, Richard.
In an elevated walkway at Dublin Airport, he paused for a moment to look down at a hare loping stiffly across a grass verge. The hare appeared to stop to look at him with the kind of terror that needed to be acknowledged. Richard tilted his forehead against the cold glass. Then, the thing that resembled a miniature kangaroo was gone and Richard was again on his way.
9
Jumping in a bin and taking the chair to the dump, that was about their marriage, about his mid-life crisis, but he had got out of the bin and had brought the chair home again. He might well have been a new man, had it not been for the chance encounter with Virginia Coates. Being lost and lustful was one thing; the actual fucking, quite another. A phony and unnatural euphoria had temporarily taken hold of him, but now he saw the light. This was the nonsense he was rehearsing for the short ascent in the lift, but really, what he cared about was that Gloria was safe and well.
Gloria wasn’t at home. Didn’t answer her phone. The apartment stunned Richard with its stillness and its personal silence. He changed his clothes. He shaved so closely, so severely, he almost took a layer of skin off. Red-faced and burning, he went to the café across the street, where he made a list of friends and family to call with his enquiries.
He kept looking up at their apartment windows in the vain hope there would be a shadow figure, a movement, a window being cracked open. His gaze drifted up to the fourth floor. He should knock on Fidelma’s door. She might know something. Richard liked Fidelma, but she drove him mad. He admired her fierceness and her independence, her blunt, unsentimental flirting. What a relief it would be if Fidelma was giving Gloria one of her lectures on family and profligacy. She was Gloria’s friend, not his. She’d be looking out for her no matter what.
Before he went back upstairs to knock on Fidelma’s door, he rang Virginia’s mobile. There was no answer. He should have left it there, but he didn’t, not least because his life was filling up with a damp muteness that came with unanswered calls. He rang the landline in the flat in Clapham. He pictured the machine ringing on the chair. It rang just twice before the receiver was lifted.
‘Virginia?’
‘No. Clarissa. Who’s this?’
‘A friend of your mother’s.’ Ravi Shankar was playing in the background. She had Virginia’s LPs out.
‘Who?’
‘Richard,’ he blurted once again. He felt he should engage. ‘How is Canada?’
‘Excuse me?’
‘Canada … I was just asking … sorry.’
‘Have we met?’
‘No. Your mother, she mentioned …’ How is Canada? Plug it, you fool. ‘She’s not about, I take it.’
‘She’s not here, Richard.’
‘Will she be home soon?’
‘She’s in Dublin. I’m not sure for how long. A few nights, I expect. Do I know you?’
‘Are you a friend of my father’s?’
Persistent, like her mother. ‘Yes,’ he lied. ‘Thanks again. I’ll give your mother a call in Dublin.’
‘I’ll tell her you rang.’
‘Please do.’
‘She has your number?’
‘Yes.’ He thought she might be about to ask for a surname, mindful girl that she was. ‘Bye-bye.’ He ended the call. Ravi Shankar played on for a short time in Richard’s head. He heard the primordial sacred sound ‘Aum’ that came before a prayer. He waited. No prayer. Nothing.
The gates to Virginia Coates’ house were shut. He got out of his car to press the bell on the intercom, which was set into one pillar. No response. He tried again. No response. He reached back into the driver’s seat, turned off the engine, took o
ut the keys. The boundary wall was more negotiable than the gates. He climbed over the wall. The evening light was fading. He tripped several times on dead wood and briar tangles, but was soon free and on the winding driveway.
When he emerged at the front of the house he was greeted by the sight of Angry John’s sports car, which somehow managed to squat angrily on the gravel.
The hall door was open. Richard went in. ‘Hello,’ he called – which was a daring and outrageous utterance, under the circumstances.
John came down the stairs slowly. ‘You,’ he chided. He seemed very much more jealous than before.
‘Me,’ Richard properly replied, as Virginia began her descent of the stairs after John. Richard felt the vibration between the couple. It was unmistakable. John would never end it. Only she could do that. And, she had, hadn’t she? She had ditched him?
It stuck him that this pair had been together very much longer than the few months since the demise of Virginia’s husband, the late Stephen Graham – our man’s good friend.
Virginia got John to withdraw to the kitchen. She took Richard into the atrophied living room and closed the door. This bullish hothead was frightened: that much was clear to Richard. He had lost Virginia and it was making him ill with rage and self-pity. He didn’t look well at all. Couldn’t they open the windows in this house, Richard wanted to know. It needed more than the hall door left swinging. They were all gagging on the stale, lifeless air.
He had come to assure her that he would not go to the police by himself, would not go behind her back. He would go with her to confess, if she would go. He wanted her to go.
She saw that he had come for more.
‘I didn’t expect you.’
‘I had to come.’
‘Your wife …?’
He wanted to say that that was something separate, like her and John being separate from her husband, Stephen. But he didn’t speak it out.
‘It’s not good?’
‘We’ll see.’
‘I’m sorry if I have complicated things.’
‘We,’ he corrected her.
She told him now that she couldn’t sleep because of what she had done on the road.
‘You’re taking stock,’ he observed bitterly.
‘I am,’ she replied, choosing to ignore the bitterness.
Richard pointed over his shoulder. ‘You and him?’
‘We’re finishing off.’
‘Ah.’
‘I thought we had already, but ….’
‘It’s taking another go.’
‘He doesn’t see reason just yet, poor John.’
‘Poor John.’
Virginia’s affairs were normally sequential. The brief one with Richard, the engineer, was an exception. It had overlapped because of unforeseen circumstances, and now it too was finished, as suddenly as it had begun. He and Virginia would hold fast to their shared secret, their little dip in the road. The accident was a tragedy for them also. They would hide their shameful flight behind their lust and their longing, which was itself a secret.
‘You should go now,’ she said, with a shivery tenderness which he didn’t like.
‘And you’ll be going back to London just as soon as you’ve finished here,’ he said with a matching quiver. ‘That is, if we keep our mouths shut.’ He had grown impatient. He wanted to leave. This was over. And what was he thinking? She wasn’t about to confess.
‘I will,’ she replied happily to his question. She shook his hand – which was an extraordinary thing to do. Then she ushered him to the hall door. There was no cruelty or misery intended in this action. Simply, they had reached a terminus. His turn-about.
She took his face in her hands and kissed him. He took hold of her wrists and pressed his elbows into her breasts for a moment, then pulled away from her. Her eyes were sparkling, her face flush with life. He saw that Virginia truly came alive for the moment of parting, the getting out, the ending of an affair. Richard was impressed. Inspired, you might say.
‘Goodbye, then.’
‘Goodbye,’ she said without rancour, without hesitation. He wanted to fold back on her, but knew better. She followed him onto the gravel, where she smiled again, but this smile fell heavily from her face and, for a fleeting moment, Richard saw again the expression of sudden longing that had mesmerised him when they had met in the city dump.
He wanted to reach out again and be doubly damned. But he did not. He experienced a convulsive wringing of the gut.
10
It came to Richard as he walked down the drive that this parting expression was a look Virginia and Gloria shared. With a startling tumble of primary cogs in his head, he found that he had done what his wife had been aching to do: in his own clumsy way, he had burst out. She had been sitting in her chair by the window, imagining an alternative life, making her plan to bolt. She had thought about doing it. He had done it, and now was full of regret.
Richard was going home. The nods and twitches he gave out with as he descended the lane were a manifestation of his incredulity at his jumbled fate. For all his regret there was, undeniably, this new-found confidence. This unearned reprieve. He walked with a distended belly, as if the waistband of his trousers was several sizes too big and he needed to expand to keep them up. He did not deserve this freedom, he was sure, but here it was. Azara. That was the name given to the species of dark green bush that overhung Virginia’s boundary wall. He was glad the information had finally come to him. He took it as a good omen.
He slowed to a saunter between the high hedges and lifted his eyes to the late evening sky. He wanted to contemplate ordinary, uneventful stuff that might have happened had he stayed at home, but his mind filled with the animal detail of the accident. The accident he and Virginia had turned into a crime. When he stopped thinking about the cyclist, he thought about his jumping into the dumpster. His bravery, he decided, outweighed his clumsiness.
The chain of events got quickly wrapped around his neck. He wouldn’t have been with Virginia had he not melded the remains of two bars of soap. He wouldn’t have met her had he not taken Gloria’s chair to the dump. Had he got to the dump a little earlier he would not have had to climb into the second enclosure; would not have had the encounter. Had she said: Ah yes, I remember you, Richard. How lovely to meet. Must go. The rubbish man wouldn’t be dead had he, Richard, not recognised Virginia. Had she not waited by the chicken-wire fence with her engine running. Had he not got into her car so readily, the rubbish man would not have reached the dip in the road ahead of Virginia’s station wagon. Would this very day be at the dump scowling through his window at members of the public meekly presenting with their waste.
With a little dart of phony euphoria, Richard realised he was again rehearsing that other life he hadn’t led. He was exhausted, and utterly dispossessed. His heart might give out. He should contemplate for a moment the prospect of not getting the nitro under his tongue quickly enough. He should start at what might be the end. From there he could go anywhere. There was a new and stupendous clarity in Richard’s life. From now on he would revel in familiarity. The narrow-bore heart that had so retarded his passion would convulse with relief and he would be at liberty as never before.
The unaccountable wind movement in the Azaras would open the gates, he fancied, if Virginia had not already opened them. If she was already upstairs rutting with her ex-, ex-lover.
Funny how himself and Virginia didn’t talk about their childhood, their early infatuation. No, it wasn’t funny. Not one bit curious. He had to get home urgently to Gloria and see what life he might yet make with her.
It was fitting that he finish off his torturous little fantasy about Gloria visiting Tom, finish it firmly in his own favour and clear his mind of it. He projects back to the naked Gloria with her shoes on Tom’s rug in front of his couch. Tom looks up from the shoes, rips his hands from his pockets, pulls Gloria off the couch and kisses her awkwardly. He’s not going to stop, is he? He’s going to thank the gods
for this good fortune and take Gloria to bed immediately. But this is Gloria, don’t forget – naked or otherwise. She’ll not be taken advantage of. Richard is the lucky one here. Gloria thanks Tom for his wine, the wine she has scarcely tasted. She indicates with a glance that she is about to leave. ‘I only came to offer my sympathy,’ she says.
‘You came about Ella?’
‘Yes. I did. I’m sorry you’ve lost her.’
Tom has difficulty getting his hands back into his pockets, but he perseveres.
‘Have another glass with me,’ old Tom says, dipping one shoulder. He’s pathetic, and he knows it, but Gloria has no clothes on.
‘Lovely to see you again, Tom,’ she says, pushing him away expertly. She stamps into her shoes and goes to the pile of clothes she shed at his hall door.
Richard pictures himself in the shower when Gloria turns the key in the lock and enters the apartment. She comes into the bedroom. They greet each other with a civil familiarity. She sits at one end of the bed. She waits for him to dry himself and come out to her. She spreads her hand on the duvet, indicating that he should sit beside her. Which he does.
Richard finds it hard to halt the gushing fantasy. He needs a stopper. Gloria, he decides, arranges for a weekend trip for them to Rome. She pays for it on her card, then buys herself a new pair of shoes. The dumpsters are larger in Rome, Richard notes, while he gazes out through the sidestreet plate-glass window of the department store where Gloria is choosing an expensive outfit he fully intends to pay for. It’s on this weekend break in Rome that Richard speaks to Gloria about not being dead. She sits on the edge of her café chair and listens carefully before answering with a simple acknowledgment. There is something in the mélange of sound from the surrounding streets that robs their words of their weight, and soon they are crossing the piazza together inhaling the smell of flowers, burnt sugar and traffic fumes. This is a fantasy he can stand over. It can be converted.
Quiet City Page 5
