Bachelor Boys (18 page)

Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys

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It was Honor Chappell.

Honor Chappell.
I had caught my boyfriend giving head to Honor Chappell, of all the people in the world. It took several long seconds for my brain to acknowledge what my eyes were telling me.

The maddest thing of all was that I was almost polite to them. I nearly apologized for intruding. I had an insane desire to make small talk and pour drinks.

Honor looked thunderstruck and (a small consolation to me later) incredibly undignified.

Matthew's head snapped round to look at me. He panted, “Oh shitâ”

Without knowing properly what I was doing, I stumbled out of the flat without a word, and down the stone stairs.

“Cassie!” His voice echoed at me from the landing. “Cassie, wait!”

I shouted, “No!” and broke into a run. I didn't know what the hell I was doing, let alone how I felt. I was a seething soup of horror, misery and angerâwith the painful seasoning of comedy that goes with loss of dignity on such a scale. I was unsettled by how calm I was. I think I must have been in shock. I should have wrapped myself in blankets and sipped hot sweet tea. Instead, I flagged down a solitary taxi, and told the driver to take me back to the party. I couldn't face my flat. I needed to drink and shout and drown in mindless noise.

I'd only been gone for forty-five minutes. The theater bar was still open. I bought myself another gin and tonic, and dodged through the noisy crowd looking for Fritz and Annabel.

I found Fritz in a corner, withâof courseâbloody Felicity Peason smarming all over him. I grabbed at his sleeve. “Where's Annabel?”

“She decided not to come back,” Fritz said. “She has a proper job to get to in the morning.”

Much as I loved Annabel, this was a relief. I wasn't ready for a postmortem. I took a large swig of gin, with what I hoped was a devil-may-care swagger. Some of it dribbled down my chin. “By the way, you were terrific. Congratulations.”

He was eyeing me curiously. “Are you okay?”

“Yes! Of course! Why shouldn't I be okay?”

“Pardon me, GrimbleâI only asked. Would you like another drink to pour down yourself?”

“Gin and tonic, please.” I didn't want another drink. I didn't even like gin. I simply wanted to get the job done as quickly as possible.

Fritz gently unwound Peason's arm. “Sorry, I need to get at my wallet.” She murmured something into his ear.

He shrugged her off, still eyeing me doubtfully. “Look, you don't drink gin. What's going on?”

“Oh, nothing. I've just split up with Matthew. But I'm fine.”

“What? Are you sure?”

I smiled brightly. “Oh yes. Totally fine. It's been on the cards for some time, you see. Though I must say,” I added, with a glance around and a social smile, “I wasn't prepared to find him having oral sex with Honor Chappell.”

Now I had really startled him. “Youâhe was doing what?”

“You remember Honor.”

“I certainly do. The bird with the crew cut.” Fritz was still surprised, but starting to recover. He leaned closer to me, lowering his voice. “What a shitâbut that's hardly the point. I'll take you home.”

“Home? But I'm fine!”

“Cassie, darling, do stop saying you're fine. You're obviously nothing of the kind, and it's just grotesque.”

“I'm not as conventional as you seem to think,” I told him airily “Of course I was shocked, but that's because Matthew said he was working. Actually, I'm finding it amazingly easy to deal with.”

“Rubbish. Crap. You're an absolute wreck. You shouldn't be out in public.” He put his hands on my shoulders, and looked down into my face with a sort of severe kindness. “Come on. The car's right outside.”

I felt that his kindness was dangerous. It would break the glass bubble if I let it, and I wouldn't be able to pretend any more that I wasn't gutted.

“I want to stay!” I protested. It came out as a whimper.

“Oh, let her stay,” Peason said, thrusting her vivid face between us and grabbing Fritz's arm. “Don't waste time arguing with her. Come and talk to your potential new agent.”

“I don't think I should leave you, Grimble,” Fritz said. “I should really be rushing off to smack that git Matthew. Failing that, I should be taking care of you.”

“Fritz, honestlyâ”

“She's fine,” Peason interrupted me. “Look at her. She doesn't need taking care of. Come on.”

I insisted that I would be all right. I urged Fritz to talk to the agent. He was skeptical, but he allowed Peason to haul him away. I took a deep breath. Now that I didn't have Fritz's sharp eyes on me, I could put up a reasonable show of being tough. I didn't know a soul at the party, but I had learned that shouting “You were brilliant!” made me accepted everywhere. Over the next hour or so I talked to several young actors (two girls, one boy) all about themselves. I must also have talked about myself, because I dimly recall one of the girls assuring me that men only gave head to women they didn't respect.

And then I was seriously drunk, and the demons closed in. I felt despair clutching at me. I saw what I had lost. Without Matthew there was no future. Nothing to hope for, nothing to dream about, nothing to stand between me and the Reaper. I was, I realized, a woman without love. I was a single woman. Nobody would invite me anywhere ever again. I'd always said that the white dress didn't matter to meâbut it mattered like hell. Beyond the astonishment of finding Matthew with Honor Chappell, there was only desolation.

I heard the high sawmill tones of Felicity Peason saying, “Take no notice of her, darlingâshe just caught her boyfriend in bed with someone else.”

I moved in a cloud of other people's giggles. My misfortunes were, apparently, hilarious. Gusts of laughter followed me through the crowd.

Fritz introduced me to a rapacious old vampire who turned out to be his new agent.

“Who did you say she was?” the vampire asked. “Editor of what? Oh, books. Well, you'd better take her homeâshe's as pissed as a lemon.”

I was about to protest (as very pissed people do) that I was not pissed. Fritz drew the agent aside, and murmured something into her ear.

“Oh, it was her!” the agent exclaimed. She gave me a look of sympathy. “You poor darling, I know exactly how you feel.”

I began to think I might be rather drunk. I was the still center of a whirling maelstrom. Faces loomed at me, chattering things I couldn't hear. I was distantly aware of my own voice shouting for gin.

Jump to the next frame.

Cold air on my hot cheeks. I was outside. Fritz was with me, holding my arm and making some sort of speech to Peason.

“ â¦ and I've no intention of leaving her here, all on her own and smashed.”

Peason snapped, “Why can't you put her in a taxi?”

“She can't go back to her place. I'm driving her to Mum's.”

“But the table's bookedâeveryone's waitingâyou can't miss this just because Cassie caught her boyfriend muff-diving!”

Fritz propped me up against his car while he opened the door. He said, “For God's sake, it's just an Indian meal. And if I desert Cassie, my mother will murder me.”

“What about deserting
me
?”

“Do be reasonable, darling. You are collected and capable. You can find your own way home without ending up in the cells. Cassie can'tâlook at her, for God's sake.”

“Well, what about if you told the taxi driver to take her to your mother's? They're very good, you know. If you give them a big enough tip they take you up the steps and ring the doorbell and everything.” (My last sober brain cell wondered how Peason knew this.)

Fritz said, “I'll be a bit late, that's all. Save me a place.”

Peason let out a cross gasp. “I can't believe you're doing this! I can't believe you're letting her ruin your first night!”

“Order me a chicken tikka.”

Peason muttered something, and flounced back into the theater.

The cool air had revived me. I found I was able to stand up straight. I thought I must be sober.

“This is really nice of you,” I told Fritz forlornly. “I was finding the party a bit of a crush. Shall we have dinner somewhere?”

Fritz smiled, looking at me as if seeing me properly for the first time. “Certainly notâI think I'd better take you straight home.”

I clutched at his shirt. “I don't want to go home. I'd rather sleep at the office.”

“Good grief, CassâI've never in my life seen you so plastered.” He almost lifted me into the car. He leaned over me to fasten my seatbelt. His head was close to mine. I shut my eyes. I was bone tired, and the pain was awful.

“Well, now you know,” he said. “Getting drunk doesn't help, does it?”

“No,” I said.

“You'll probably feel worse for a while. But it won't last long.” His eyes were on the road. His voice was kind. “Honestly, it'll soon start to feel better. Listen to the voice of experience. When you're splitting up with someone you're not really meant to be with, the agony is sharp, but it doesn't last long.”

“It's not fair,” I said. It came out as a whimper. I was crying. Great sobs shook me. The facts lay in my path like lumps of stone, impossible to bypass or ignore. My hopes were in ruins. “It's not fair!” I sobbed. “Why should Honor get him? She hasn't done any of the work!”

We'd halted at a traffic light. Fritz put his warm hand on my knee. “That Moose is even denser than he looks. Only an idiot would prefer the one with the crew cut.”

“She's obviously got something I haven't,” I cried out. “Matthew never went down on
me
!”

Fritz turned the car into a side street. He parked under a street lamp and took me in his arms.

It didn't occur to me until much later that he was expected at a first-night dinner. He let me weep into his shoulder as if he had all the time in the world.

Weeping in Fritz's arms is the last thing I remember.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

I
was struggling in the jaws of a ferocious hangover. I hadn't felt this dreadful since the aftermath of my finals. Every fiber, every capillary, every tiny muscle I never knew I had sang and vibrated with pain. My blood had turned to iron filings. Opening my swollen, gritty eyes was a tremendous effort, like heaving up two metal shutters.

First, I was aware of a piercing self-pity. Then I registered that I was lying in Phoebe's spare bedroom. Bright daylight hammered at the Habitat curtains, and lay in hard lozenges on the faded rug.

Now I remembered being hauled up the steps by Fritz. I remembered darling Annabel making me herbal tea and unzipping my jeans. And if I'd had a drop of spare moisture in my desert of a body, I would have wept again. How were the mighty fallen. My best friend was now part of a loving couple (“You go out, FritzâI'll take care of her”) and I had been exposed as a beggar for kippers on a vast and unprecedented scale.

I decided sitting up might make me feel better. I was wrongâbut once I was upright, I thought I might as well stay like that. The mirror on the dressing table showed me the ruin of my face. Several broad black smudges of eye makeup did not improve its creased puffiness.

Slowly (none of my senses were working properly) I registered the comforting smells of coffee and Phoebe. With a vague idea of casting myself into her arms, I put on a dusty toweling robe which was hanging on the back of the door, and stumbled downstairs.

I found her sitting at the kitchen table. A pot of fresh coffee waited on the counter. She had not felt strong enough to carry it to the table. For
once, her physical delicacy didn't seem to matter. Phoebe was calm, radiating compassion, absolutely
there
.

She smiled as the wreck of HMS
Cassie
lurched into the room. “Hello, darling. I thought I heard you. I didn't trust myself to get up the stairs, but I knew you'd smell the coffee.” (Yes, I'd woken up and smelled the proverbial coffee at last.) “Now, before you say a word, Fritz has already spoken to Betsy.”

I gasped, “Oh God, it's Friday! Oh Godâwhat's the time?”

“I hope you don't mind, but he told her what happened.”

The shock of losing control on such a scale had winded me like a kick in the stomach. Dear lord in heaven, I'd forgotten to go to work. I was the woman who had got herself to work through hell and high water, with raging temperatures and on crutches. And I'd bloody well forgotten. I collapsed into a chair.

“I've got to get in,” I moaned. “I can't leave Betsy all aloneâdid you say Fritz told her?”

“Not in detail,” Phoebe assured me. “Just that you'd had a bad bust-up with Matthew. He didn't say anything about you getting drunk,” she added, “but I'm afraid she guessed. She says everything's fine. She says the man from the printer's isn't coming in till Monday now. Doesn't that sound like good news? So pour yourself a cup of coffee and stop panicking. Look at the lovely freesias Fritz left for you.”

In the middle of the table, leaning lopsided in a tall glass, was a bunch of freesias. Bells of scarlet and purple nodded on the skinny stems, and they breathed out the scent of spring.

“He got them from that stall beside the station, when he went out to fetch the papers.”

Mentally, I searched the smoking rubble of my memory. “Were there any reviews? Was he mentioned?”

“Oh yes.” Here was another reason for Phoebe's strength and serenity. She was beaming. “There's a picture of him in the
Guardian
. Michael Billington says he has a considerable gift for comedy. Isn't it exciting? He had to go out, to see that agent who wants to take him on. But he left the flowers to cheer you up.”

She was not bossy, but she was in charge. I poured myself a mug of coffee and sat down opposite her.

She chuckled softly. “Poor panda eyes.”

The dried-up ducts of my panda eyes smarted. I gulped that I was sorry I looked so terrible, sorry that I'd ruined Fritz's first night, sorry that I'd been disgustingly drunk. Phoebe, her face glowing and almost youthful with her warmth for me, made soothing, hurt-knee noises and mildly scolded me for apologizing.

“You've had a nasty shock,” she told me. “I must say, I was surprised that a man like Matthew could be so deceitful. But Annabel says I was taken in. She says you can never trust a man with very small earlobes.” (You will gather that Phoebe and Annabel were, in many ways, two of a kind.)

“Annabel was here last night, wasn't she?”

“She was staying in the basement,” Phoebe said. “She woke up when Fritz brought you inâmore dead than alive, you poor sweetheart.”

“It's awful,” I said, “but I don't remember. I only remember being devastated. Was I still crying?”

“Far from it. I heard you. You were singing.”

“Singing?” I never sing. I couldn't carry a tune downstairs. “What was I singing?”

Phoebe's lips twitched. “The theme from
Hong Kong Phooey.
”

“What?”

“That's what it sounded like. You kept chanting âNumber One Super-Dog!' over and over again.”

“Oh God. I'm so sorry.”

“I think you were being defiant.”

Some blurred snapshots of memory were coming back to me. I sighed. “I might have been trying to sing âI Will Survive,' but I don't know the words. Poor Fritz. What an embarrassment. I ruined his first night.”

“Nonsense, of course you didn't. Stop blaming yourself.”

I wiped my eyes on the sleeve of the dressing gown and drank down a cup of Phoebe's uniquely heartening coffee. I made toast. Phoebe directed me to a packet of painkillers in one of the kitchen drawers. Halfway down the second cup of coffee, I could survey the wreckage calmly.

“Phoebe,” I said, “what shall I do?”

“You need to get away from everything,” Phoebe said. “I think you should go to see Ruth.”

I was startled. I had expected a remedy for a broken heart. At a time like this, I didn't need to be reminded about my poor mother. I didn't want Phoebe to know how distant we had become. With a disagreeable twinge of guilt, I realized that I had not even spoken to Ruth on the phone for nearly three months. I hadn't actually seen her since the previous Boxing Day. The memory of that depressing exchange of bath products pulled me down to new depths. Ruth had retired from the hospital to a small house beside the sea, and I kept finding excuses not to visit her there.

Our relationship had congealed into distant mutual esteem, very much based around rituals of politeness. We avoided all controversial subjects (for instance, my father), and sometimes it was like trying to communicate through a ouija board. Ruth's work was her life, and her life had always been her work. She couldn't seem to stop being a psychiatrist. She planned to spend her retirement writing her book,
The Country Diary of an Edwardian Shrink
(just kidding; it was really about treating the criminally insane).

“You haven't been to the new house,” Phoebe said. “Ruth told me she'd love to see you.”

Typically, Phoebe was better at keeping up with my mother than I was. She maintained a strange fondness for Ruth, though I felt their friendship seemed rather one-sided.

“Call her now, darling. Tell her you're coming today.”

I protested that I didn't have the strength. Phoebe brushed this aside. She was firm. I was to go back to my flat, wash my face, pack some warm clothes and drive down to the coast that very afternoon. In the end, it was easiest to give in.

“I wish I could go with you,” she said. “I'll send her a housewarming present, at least. What do you think she'd like?”

“Don't ask me,” I said. “What do you get for a person who thinks good taste is a symptom of paranoid schizophrenia?”

“Poor Ruth, you never give her a chance,” Phoebe said automatically. She smiled. “Of course. I know the perfect thing. Could you run up to the bedroom and fetch the bluebell quilt?”

Once again, I was startled. “You can't!”

“Why on earth not?”

“Your mother made it!” I couldn't understand why she considered Ruth worthy of the precious bluebell quilt. This had lain across the small chaise longue in her bedroom for years without number. “It's too much. The boys won't like you giving it away.”

“Ruth asked me about it once, when you were little,” Phoebe said. “She loved the story as much as you did. I never forgot that.”

I was curious. The story of the bluebell quilt was simple. Phoebe's mother had sewed it while pregnant with her only child. She had lost two babies, and her doctor had ordered her to rest. For nine months she had sewed all her hopes into the quilting frame, until Phoebe had appeared with the stitching of the last little bell. Why had my mother “loved” this? I sensed that something had passed between her and Phoebe, but Phoebe was serenely inscrutable. It was no use asking questions. Phoebe had decided, and mine was not to reason why. I brought the quilt down to her. She held it in her lap, stroking it thoughtfully.

Her mother had stitched it full of hopes for her child, and now that child was dying. I had a bleak sense of the tragedy of human love. Where did it all go? Was love a foretaste of the next world, or did it only linger as a memory, like the scent of lavender in a drawer?

I followed Phoebe's elaborate instructions for folding and wrapping the quilt. Several times, she apologized for working me so hard.

“I know I'm a slave driver, but it's so frustrating when you know how things ought to be done.”

She called for the phone, not trusting me to ring Ruth myself, and it was all arranged.

Three hours later I was on the motorway, with the bluebell quilt on the seat beside me.

The drive into my mother's town filled me with depression. I passed rows of modern bungalows and parades of low-rent shops. The sky was a sheet of lead. Drops of rain flecked the windscreen. A slab of gray sea was visible between wet gray roofs, disappearing into the gray horizon. There were few things more deathly, I thought, than a British resort that hasn't been popular since the 1930s. Huddled figures fought the howling gale on the high street. The windows of the red-brick town hall were boarded
up, and there was a FOR SALE sign rotting on the front door. Dirty posters for last year's pantomime lingered on obscure walls. The window of the single clothes shop displayed, on mannequins in lopsided wigs, old-lady dresses of amazing awfulness.

What a dump, I thought.

I followed a dented sign that said ESPLANADE, and nosed my car through narrow streets to a small bay. A single row of beach shops and chippies faced a sullen sea. The only signs of life were the figures of an old man and his dog, struggling past the amusement arcade. How on earth was I meant to stand a whole weekend in this benighted place? Why did Phoebe think being here would help my broken heart?

There was a straggling row of houses beyond the shops, climbing up the hill to the cliff top. I tried (and failed) to picture these in sunny weather, with sandy towels and damp swimming costumes festooned across the wooden balconies. Ruth lived along here, and I counted the house numbers anxiously (please God, let it not be that one with the hideous net curtains). It was difficult, because most of the houses also had namesâ“Sea Breezes,” “Ocean Spray,” and other things that sounded like air fresheners.

At the very end of the Esplanade, perched on top of the cliff beside a car park, was a terrace of old flint cottages.

And there was my mother, standing in the road hugging herself, with her straight gray hair all over the place in the wind. I was surprisedâI suppose because I had expected her to be wearing the stiff and frumpy maroon suit she kept for work. I had to remind myself that she wasn't working any more. The retired Ruth was absolutely shapeless in men's cords and a thick gray jersey. Oddly enough, she looked nice. She was smiling.

I smiled back. It was one of those determined smiles that have to be removed by surgery, and it continued to distort my face while I parked and unloaded my luggage.

“Well!” I said.

Ruth's face was browner and more lined than I remembered. She stood rigid while I kissed her cheek (it was like kissing a totem pole). “Come on in.” She took the large, squashy parcel from my arms.

“That's from Phoebe,” I said. “Housewarming present.”

“Another one? She sent me one when I moved in. A salad bowl.”

“Maybe she forgot,” I said.

Ruth's bright, curranty-dark eyes (mine exactly) screwed up thoughtfully. “How is she?”

“Pretty good, actually.”

“I mean really.”

My smile faded. “It can't be long now. Months, if we're lucky.”