Bachelor Boys (24 page)

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Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys
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“It wasn't anything personal,” Annabel said. “The bank lost a huge amount of money, and they economized by getting rid of half the staff. We were streaming out of that building like those animals that hurl themselves over cliffs.”
“Surely they gave you some notice?”
“Oh Cassie, you're such an innocent.” Annabel was almost cheerful—she loved a chance to patronize me. “They don't have to give notice in my world. We were all worried, but none of us had a clue when the sword was going to fall. I walked into work as usual—and ten minutes later I found myself walking out again, with all the stuff from my desk in a binbag.”
“But that's awful!”
“That's just life in the Square Mile. Why do you think they pay us so much?”
“Did you manage to hang on to any of it?”
“Not much. Thank God I paid off my mortgage with my last bonus.”
Our taxi was drawing up in front of Phoebe's house. I got out and paid the driver. Once she was on the pavement, Annabel got nervous again.
“Cassie, please. I'm not ready. He'll be so shocked—we only did it once!”
“Twice, you mean.” I pulled her up the steps and rang the bell.
Ben opened the door. His sullen face opened out when he saw Annabel. They both turned beetroot—which was so romantic that for a moment I was almost tearful. They were so in love that I could feel it in the air between them. I could practically see it.
“It's all right,” Ben said. “You don't have to creep or whisper. Mum won't wake up till about three in the morning.”
The mention of Phoebe eased the tension between them. Annabel touched his arm gently. “How is she?”
“She sat out in the garden this morning,” Ben said. “She wanted to see the trees before the leaves fall.”
“That's nice. They do look so lovely.”
I led the way into the kitchen. There was enough suffering in this world, I thought; these two could stop suffering now, at least as far as love was concerned. I switched on the kettle to make three cups of tea.
Ben had been working at the big table. It was strewn with musical scores, upon which he had been penciling detailed notes. While I made the tea, he stood with his hands in his pockets, staring—glowering, actually—at Annabel.
I picked up my tea. “I'm going upstairs, just to peep at Phoebe,” I said. “I promise not to wake her. I won't be back for ages.”
“Cassie, wait—” Annabel made a grab at my arm, slopping tea on the wooden floor.
“Annabel wants to talk to you.” I longed to stay. I longed to bang their heads together and force them to cut to the chase. Unfortunately, there are some things you have to let people do for themselves. Shutting the door behind me, I took my tea up to Phoebe's bedroom.
Upstairs, the house was hushed in heavy sleep. The door to Phoebe's room stood slightly open. I stole to the side of her bed and stared down at her still figure, propped on a cairn of pillows and scarcely breathing. I had last spent a night here two days before, and couldn't help checking her for visible signs of decline. I was aware of a mighty surge of protectiveness. It hurt me with a physical pain that cold winds could blow on her. I could see the delicate bones of her skull under the pale mist of flesh. When she slept, the real essence of Phoebe seemed horribly far away. I had to fight a primitive instinct to wake her, to bring her back to us. Oh help me, whatever powers there are that help the despairing.
I don't know how long I stood there. I looked at nothing but Phoebe's still profile, but was aware of the room around me, puzzlingly unchanged. She used to let us lie on her bed when we felt ill. I knew every curl of every rose petal on the faded chintz curtains. I could still find the particular pink rose that slightly resembled Hitler if you half
closed your eyes. I remembered, as powerfully as if I'd been lying in her place, the coolness of the fat red eiderdown against a feverish cheek. This was the bed she had shared with Jimmy, and it still looked misshapen without him.
For a moment, death amazed me. How could vivid, breathing, laughing, loving people vanish so completely? There had to be some mistake.
Suddenly, I couldn't stand not being with warm, problematical living people. I crept out of Phoebe's bedroom and finished my mug of tea sitting on the stairs. The big kitchen and sitting room were very quiet. I had been nosy enough, I decided. I would wait until I was summoned.
The door opened. Ben came out into the hall. He looked absolutely dazed (Fritz would later say he looked as if he had electrodes fixed to his balls). His stunned eyes took me in. His face cleared a little.
“Oh, Cass,” he said. “There you are.” He smiled (another few thousand volts charging through the electrodes). “D'you happen to know where Mum put that bottle of champagne?”
 
Phoebe rang me at work the next day, bubbling over with joy. It was beautiful to hear.
“Don't mind me if I witter—I'm quite mad with happiness. Poor Annabel was afraid I'd think she was a slut—well, I suppose she is a bit of a slut, but sometimes it's just necessary. I'm glad my lovely future daughter-in-law is a bit of a slut. If she'd behaved like a perfect lady, none of these nice things would be happening.”
“It seems so natural,” I said. “So expected. I don't know why I was surprised.”
“I know, right under our noses,” Phoebe said. “A couple of times, when I've been talking to Annabel, I've wondered who she reminded me of. And of course, it's Ben. The two of them are just as sweet and silly as each other. I'm so happy that he's got Annabel to take care of him now. Oh, he's going to be a wonderful father—you should hear him talking about the baby. You'd think he'd planned it.” Her voice was faint and breathless, but her giggle was as youthful as ever. “He went out and bought a magazine. Suddenly he has all sorts of opinions about night feeds and weaning—wouldn't Jimmy have howled?”
I asked, “Does Fritz know?”
“Not yet,” Phoebe said, “but my guess is that he'll be as happy as I am.”
Two nights later, when I went to do one of my stints with Phoebe, Fritz himself assured me that her guess had been right.
“Come on, what do you think? I'm deliriously happy. I thought I'd be looking after Ben till the crack of doom.”
“Seriously.”
“Never been more serious in my life, Grimble. Apart from anything else, the release from guilt is wonderful.”
Peason asked, “What on earth did you have to feel guilty about?” She was irritable—I sensed that something had activated an old disagreement between them.
A spark of anger snapped in Fritz's dark eyes. “If you have to smoke,” he said shortly, “open the window.”
She sighed, took one pace toward the kitchen window and flicked ash into the sink. Fritz marched across to the window, opening it violently and loudly. Cold autumn air blasted into the warm room.
He turned back to me, as if Peason had become invisible. “I felt terrible about Annabel. That was a mistake I shouldn't have made—not with someone who can't fight back.”
“You're right,” I said (trying not to be intimidated by the magnificent sulkiness of Peason). “She's not a fighter.”
“Neither is Ben. Imagine the harmony of their home.”
“And Ben's forgiven you properly now?”
Fritz grinned. “God, yes. All is sweetness and light in our humble basement. I just wish he wouldn't keep hugging me.”
It was early on a Sunday evening. Peason was dragging Fritz off to dinner somewhere in the country. Fritz couldn't leave until he had finished his detailed page of instructions. I could never persuade him to leave everything to me. It wasn't that he didn't trust me. He was superbly calm and confident, and a rock for us all to lean upon, but only when he felt he was in absolute control.
Peason, still in her coat, sighed and smoked beside the sink. She looked at her watch. “Are we ever going?”
“Please go,” I said. “I know what to do. We'll be fine.”
Fritz dropped his pen and leaned over to give me a quick kiss. “Okay, I've written down the new times for the drugs. You won't forget that the white pills are the really important ones?”
“I won't forget.”
“And you'll call me if anything happens? Anything at all?”
“I swear.”
“Okay, we'll get out. I'll just tell her we're leaving.”
He ran upstairs. Peason and I were left alone together. I couldn't help arranging my face into a polite smile, but Peason stayed sullen. At some point, I had obviously fallen off her politeness list.
She said, “Fritz gave you his mobile number, didn't he?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Look, will you do me a favor? Don't ring the number unless it's a real emergency. Bloody Ben's been ringing every five minutes.”
I assured her that she could trust me not to bother her unnecessarily.
She sighed fretfully. “Frankly, I don't see why Ben has to be in our hair all the time. And now he's adding a wife and baby to the population downstairs. As it is, we're living in an absolute crowd. Why can't he stay with Annabel in her flat?”
“Because of Phoebe,” I suggested, putting my hand behind my back so I didn't smack her.
“Oh. Yes. I see what you mean,” Peason said. “Well, as long as they realize it can't carry on like this after she's gone.”
Fritz came back into the room to collect this loathsome creature. His face was closed and slightly angry. He wasn't in love with her, of that I was sure. If he loved Peason we had lost him.
I
t was a beautiful wedding, all the more so because our joy was heavily spiked with sadness. Nobody said anything, but denial was no longer a possibility. Phoebe was fading before our eyes. Every day, her mooring among us became a little less secure. She was very happy, but she was floating away from us into the air.
As she grew lighter, the task of caring for her became heavier. She spent most of her days lying serenely in bed, her eyes half closed, but she needed constant watching. It hurt me to see my beloved lying helpless, and it hurt me that her boys had to see it. I have to record here—I wish it could be engraved on stone for all time—that Fritz and Ben were heroes. I have come to believe that caring for the helpless is the truest heroism on this earth, and their care of Phoebe was magnificent. Her pride in them took the sting out of her dependence.
When she couldn't sleep, Ben used to leave all the doors open and play the piano to her, sometimes far into the night. In the past, the rather scary people next door had complained about his nocturnal recitals. They never complained now. The scary woman only asked after Phoebe, and her husband left a bottle of wine on the doorstep for the boys. I learned that death, like birth, brings out amazing kindness in the most unexpected people.
Fritz was the rock of the household. In this situation someone has to be in charge, and we all automatically turned to Fritz. I can't imagine when he found time to sleep.
Rookery Nook
was still running in the West End. He had bagged himself another commercial (you'll definitely remember
this one—he played the slob who magically transforms into Beau Brummel when his wife makes microwaveable coq au vin). Felicity continued to hold him in sexual thrall, but he somehow found the time to read aloud to Phoebe for hours, or to make her laugh with stories of the past. The past and the present were curiously mingled these days. We lived in both places.
The days chilled and shortened. Weeks slipped past, without any real sense of time passing. We were living in another dimension of reality. I found I couldn't settle to anything unless I was with Phoebe. I made stupid mistakes at work, and didn't give a damn (good old Betsy picked up the pieces). The only person I felt comfortable with, apart from Phoebe and the boys, was Annabel.
Darling Annabel, her kipper-begging days were over. She and Ben lived in a state of mutual worship—which could, if I'm honest, be a little cloying at times. On the whole, however, their love was sunshine in this sad house. One evening, when Phoebe lay sleeping upstairs, and the four of us sat around the table in the kitchen, Fritz said, “You two are serious about getting married, aren't you?”
“Of course!” Annabel cried, her mouth full of fruit cake.
“Well, you ought to do it as soon as possible, don't you think?”
He looked across the table at Ben. Their gazes locked. Ben was tense.
“What, you mean because she's pregnant?”
Fritz was gentle. “I mean, if you want Mum to be there.”
Ben said, “Oh,” breathlessly, as if Fritz had punched him.
“Is it going to be soon, do you think?” Annabel asked. Her great blue eyes filled.
“There's no way of knowing for sure,” Fritz said. “But don't you think we should give her a wedding while she has the energy to enjoy it?”
Ben's eyes were also wet. “I'd marry Annabel tomorrow.”
“I thought next week,” Fritz said. “We can't do anything elaborate, but we'll make it as perfect as we can, on a small scale. You know what a traditionalist she is.”
“Oh yes,” I said. “Phoebe will want a church and a white meringue and the whole shooting match. But Fritz, we can't get all that together in a week!”
“Nonsense. Of course we can. And I particularly need your feminine input.”
“I'll do anything I can, but I don't know any more about weddings than you do. You should ask Poison.”
His smile became bitter. “Dear old Poisony—I did ask her, and she said she didn't want anything to do with it. I spend far too much time with my family, apparently.”
I could hardly believe that anyone could be this self-centered. “She does know about Phoebe, doesn't she?”
“She can't understand anyone caring this much about a mere mother,” Fritz said. “It's sad, really. And the saddest thing is that I can't make her see how sad it is.” He smiled at me. “Anyway, I'd rather do the wedding with you.”
“Great,” I said. “I'd love to arrange a wedding—it might be my only chance.”
Annabel reached out and squeezed my hand. “I won't let you say that. I said things like that till only recently, and look what happened to me, for goodness' sake.”
“Cheer up, Grimble,” Fritz said. “Winter is coming. Soon the moose will return to the plains to breed.”
“Fritz, please. No more moose routines.”
He smiled—one of his blazing smiles that warmed the whole room. “I have to be sure you're over him.”
“Oh yes,” Annabel assured him. “She doesn't even think about him.”
“I was asking Cassie.”
“I'm totally and utterly over him,” I said. “Even to the point of being rather pleased for Honor.”
“I told you the crew cut was another moose, darling. It's lovely for her, because she could do a lot worse. And she certainly won't do any better.”
“Fritz!”
“Those two belong together. You're different.”
“How?”
“You're prettier.”
“Am I?”
Fritz fluttered his eyes girlishly and echoed, “Am I?”
“Okay, okay.” I might have known I wouldn't get any more. Fritz didn't feel too many compliments were good for my character. But this one would do to be going on with.
 
The following day, Fritz and I met for a chilly sandwich lunch (we were both skint again) on a bench in Green Park to draw up our plans. Fritz had already spoken to the local vicar. This vicar, who knew Phoebe, was sympathetic. He arranged to do all sorts of complicated and archaic things (I think some kind of special license from the bishop was involved) so that we could have our traditional church wedding the following Friday.
Not to be outdone, I had consulted Betsy. Betsy had married three daughters and there was nothing you could tell her about arranging a reasonably priced yet tasteful wedding. With her help, I had made a list of essentials.
“There isn't an engagement ring,” I said. “Can Ben afford one?”
“No,” Fritz said, his mouth full of ham baguette. “But he doesn't have to. Mum wants him to give Annabel one of Granny's rings.”
Jimmy's mother had left some lovely pieces of jewelry, which I had often played with on rainy afternoons when we were all little. I cried, “Oh yes—the one with the sapphire forget-me-nots! It'll look lovely on her.”
“Nope. It's the emerald with diamond bits.”
“Whatever.” I crossed it off my list. “Thank God we don't have to pay for it.”
“Yes, thank God,” Fritz said, wincing at the mention of money. “But I'm not doing this on the cheap either. It means everything to Mum, and it's got to be perfect.”
I couldn't have agreed more. For once, Fritz and I wanted exactly the same things and were in perfect accord. It felt wonderful. It sent me back to the office with a little pilot light of hope inside me.
That afternoon, Betsy, Shay and Puffin confronted me at my desk. They were solemn. For a moment I thought they were all going to resign, or file an official complaint against my editorship (they were spending a lot of time covering for me nowadays). But it turned out that they wanted to pay for the flowers, as a wedding gift. They all knew that I'd be paying for some of it—we were pooling our overdrafts because this was
an emergency. I was deeply grateful to have something crossed off the final bill, and so moved by their kindness that I had to swallow several times before I could thank them.
“A bouquet for the bride, white buttonholes all round and an arrangement for the table,” Betsy said. “With our love.”
I didn't deserve to be loved by my colleagues. I took my body into work that week, but my mind was everywhere else. The truth was, I had absolutely set my heart on seeing Annabel married in a real bride's dress—a gorgeous great snow-white dress that would make her look like a plump orchid. This became an obsession. Annabel didn't care about anything except making love and eating, but I made her try on about a hundred bridal gowns. It is surprisingly difficult to find one of these in a hurry. They were all too pricey, too silly, too tacky or (most often) too small. Annabel's willowy blond form was, in every sense of the word, blooming. Her breasts had bloomed into Page Threes. Her bum had bloomed into a size I can't reveal because she'd never speak to me again. Why couldn't I find her a simple white dress with a plain bodice and full skirt? I spent hours on the phone and on the Net, searching in theatrical costumiers and antique clothes shops. I tried to find a Charles Dickens— cruel dressmaker, who would make forty fainting girls run up a frock in a ludicrously short time. I found nothing. Worse than nothing—dress after dress so terrible that we ended up in fits of laughter.
And then, when I was beginning to be desperate, the miracle happened. I really think it was a miracle. I was in a taxi, inching along a traffic jam on Kentish Town Road. We drew level with the Help the Aged shop—and I saw it.
It was hanging clumsily on a plastic model in the window, beside a blouson jacket in tan leather and a foot spa. And it was exactly what I'd had in my mind's eye—white fitted bodice, long, full white skirt, both perfect in their chaste simplicity. Great heaven, the Bluebird of Happiness had been in our own backyard all along, I had searched far and wide for Annabel's perfect dress, and here it was in the window of a local charity shop.
I got out of the taxi, my heart thudding—all my senses were, for some reason, in panic mode. I made myself walk right up to the window. The dress was even lovelier up close. And the size was generous. Please, let it not be sold.
It was not sold. It had only arrived that morning. According to the lady at the till, it had been brought in by a woman with a baby, who didn't like to be reminded how fat she'd become. I was glad to hear that the donor of the dress was still married—I wouldn't have liked Annabel to wear a Dress of Doom. And the detail of the baby felt promising, like some kind of fertility symbol.
The lady at the till said she couldn't take less than fifty pounds. I gave her a hundred, which was a fragment of my dress budget. And while she hunted for a large enough bag, I cradled the great bale of rustling white silk in my arms. There was no veil, but I remembered a rather fabulous white taffeta stole I'd seen in some bridal shop or other, which I could now afford. I had done it. Annabel was going to be a real bride.
I couldn't resist rushing it round to Annabel at once. She'd had a hospital appointment that afternoon, and was staying in the basement. When she opened the door to me we both spoke at the same time.
I said, “I've got the dress!”
And Annabel said, “It's twins!”
 
Yes, there were two of the little Darlings. Phoebe received the news like a gift. Her delight injected her with energy. On the magical, miraculous day of the scan and the dress, she felt well enough to sit downstairs for two hours. It was one of those happy evenings when time stopped.
That's all. Not much happened, except that we told funny stories about the past. We wanted to remember ordinariness. We wanted to pretend things were still ordinary. Phoebe spoke of Jimmy in a teasing way, as if he were listening in the next room. It was very strange, but not as sad as you might think. Not sad at all.
You know, even while they are happening, that the memories of these moments will be jewels to you afterward. You know you'll spend the rest of your life wishing you could climb back inside them.
 
We were to be a very small party. Annabel had decided to keep her turbulent parents out of the picture. “The two of them can't be in the same room, even after all these years,” she reminded me. “Ben and I can visit them later.”
I was sorry they would miss it, but only mildly. The antics of her parents had, over the years, caused Annabel a great deal of grief.
“All they cared about was having affairs,” she said. “They made a big fuss of me, but they grabbed any excuse to fob me off on someone else. I'm sure everyone says this—but I'm going to do it differently. When my babies come, I'll never leave them for a single minute.”
Ouch. Emotion. The revelation of Annabel as a mother, fondly patting her rounded stomach, was oddly moving. It occurred to me that all her kipper-begging propensities had found an outlet at last—but I couldn't think about it too long, because imagining a world with Annabel's babies also meant imagining one without Phoebe. We were all surviving by digging our heels into the present.

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