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Authors: Kate Saunders

BOOK: Bachelor Boys
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“You had a good excuse,” I said.
“You were incredibly kind to me.” Fritz turned his back and began bundling old magazines into a black binbag. “Just as you've been incredibly kind for weeks and weeks. Now that it's all over, I've been trying to keep out of your face—but I've missed you. Okay? I want you to know that.”
He wouldn't look at me. I wished I knew how to reach him, but beyond a certain level he did not communicate. Phoebe's death had thrown up a shield. Still, I was aware of something very like happiness, simply because he had said he missed me. I was working beside him. We were comfortable together, winnowing through the rubbish. I had never felt this comfortable with a man I was in love with. We made a highly effective team. In a couple of hours half the chaos had been graded and tidied into symmetrical piles.
Fritz flopped down on a sofa space that had just been cleared. “How skint are you?”
“I'm low on cash, but my Switch card is responding nicely at the moment.” (Here was another first—telling a man I loved the truth about my finances.)
“Good, we can order an Indian.”
We did so, and the meal arrived with another bottle of red wine. It was rather sour, but we were drunk enough not to mind. Fritz ate enormously. So did I. We sat on the sofa, beached and lazy.
“You know,” Fritz said, studying me thoughtfully, “I like what's happened to your hair.”
“It's grown,” I said. Back in another life, when I was in love with Matthew, I had formed the habit of short, neat hair. I tried to remember when I had last managed to get to John Frieda (New Cavendish Street). To me, the uneven, undisciplined growth was as disturbing as a neglected shrubbery. I was surprised that the fastidious Fritz approved.
He was still looking at me solemnly. His face was close to mine. “You're very sexy when you loosen up. It doesn't suit you to be minimalist. You should let out your inner hippy chick.”
“None of my inner chicks are hippies.”
“Don't fight it. Let your wild hair grow. Show an inch or two of bare flesh. Wear lipstick.”
“Now?” I hadn't worn a single smear of makeup since the funeral.
“Don't be silly. I just mean in general. To show the world you're interested in sex.”
Sex flickered between us—and then the bloody doorbell rang.
 
Who knows what might have happened? It doesn't matter. The spark died. Fritz, with fleeting regret, went to answer the door.
I heard a low female voice, and a moment later she was in the room.
“Cassie!” She swooped to kiss me. “MmchWAH!” (A real sink-plunger.)
Felicity Peason. She was as vulgarly beautiful as ever—all lustrous hair and antelope limbs. She was pointedly conveying sympathy. She rattled out a speech about how sad it was, how sorry she was. She accepted a glass of sour wine, and sipped it without making a face. She was on her best behavior. What was she up to?
Fritz was distantly polite, simmering with leftover anger. She placed a hand on his sleeve, and he shrugged it off almost with violence.
“I won't stay long,” Peason said. “I can see how busy you are. It's such a huge thing, isn't it, when you're selling a house?”
“I wouldn't know,” Fritz said. “I've never done it.”
“Oh—” I felt Peason's senses sharpening. “But you are—the house is going on the market, isn't it?”
“Yes.”
She relaxed. “That's what I've come about. Cassie, do forgive us for talking business.”
Was this a hint for me to leave? If so, up hers.
“Don't mind me,” I said. “I love other people's business.” I started sorting again.
Fritz said, “What are you talking about, anyway?”
“I'm here about the house,” Peason said. “I know this is cheeky of me—but have you had any offers yet?”
Fritz said, “No. It's not on the market yet.”
“Oh, how marvelous. I'd like to put in an offer now. I'd like to buy this house.” She glanced around the room in (I thought) a proprietorial way. “I've managed to persuade my father to see it as an investment. We'll obviously expect to pay the full asking price—and you can sidestep the estate agents.”
I was intensely annoyed. Fritz did not like Peason. But she was still very sexy, and I didn't trust him not to fall back into the void.
“Anyway, please do think about it. Please, Fritz.” (She said this in a lick-my-tits voice that set my teeth on edge.) “It could all be so easy and hassle-free if we did it like this, not to mention cheaper. Why not?”
Fritz was listening. “I don't know,” he said. “It's not a bad idea, I suppose. Have you really got that much money?”
She smiled and shrugged. “Yes, more or less. And I've been in love with this house since—well, since I was in love with you.”
A private signal passed between them—very brief, but as noticeable to me as a scream.
“I can't make any promises,” Fritz said. “I have to talk to Ben.”
“Of course. Please believe me, Fritz—I'm not trying to get special treatment. I felt free to make my offer because it would work for both of us. That's all.”
“It'd be good to save the estate agent's percentage,” Fritz said thoughtfully. “They charge a fortune.”
“Exactly And I know you're short of money. Or you wouldn't be doing that pantomime.”
He winced slightly. “It's work. How about you? Anything lined up?”
“Oh God, don't talk to me about work!” Peason rolled her eyes. “The RSC made me an offer, but only to understudy—”
They talked, in a stilted, only half-truthful fashion, about the theater.
I hefted piles of old vinyl recordings, willing Peason to leave. I was sure she was coming on to Fritz, and he was visibly thawing. He even offered her another glass of wine.
She laughed, and said she was going out to dinner. She kissed us both, and left a cloud of perfume where she had been standing, like a very expensive fart.
“Of all the nerve,” I said, after she had gone.
Fritz picked up another box, without seeing it. “I wonder if she's serious?”
“Forget it.”
“Certainly not. It's a bloody good offer, if she really has got the cash.”
“It's a horrible offer,” I said. “Doesn't it make you sick, to think of her living here?”
I thought he looked, for a moment, uneasy. But he said, “Darling, we can't afford to wait until someone virtuous buys this place. There's a chronic shortage of people with silly amounts of money. We might be languishing on the market for months.”
“You can't mean you'll do it!” I was aghast. I knew I was jealous and irrational, but the bare idea of Peason in Phoebe's house was appalling. “No!” I dropped a pile of records in a fury. “You can't! You remember what she's like—what a selfish bitch she was about Phoebe!”
“Phoebe's dead,” Fritz said. His voice was steady, but his face was suddenly blank and bleached. “Nothing Felicity says or does can hurt her now.”
“Think of yourself, then—and Ben. How will you feel, knowing your childhood home has been raped?”
“I told you,” Fritz said. “It's not a shrine. Do let's be rational. If it's any consolation, I'm not planning to jump back in bed with her.”
“Really? Are you sure about that?”
Fritz snapped, “For God's sake! Of course I'm sure!”
“She looked as if she was planning to jump back into bed with you. She couldn't have made it clearer if she'd whipped her clothes off.”
“She'd have been wasting her time.”
“Good.”
“Grimble, pull yourself together.” Fritz moved a heap of books to the pile for the jumble sale. He faced me, planting his hands on his hips. “I
thought we were being civilized, but you're as determined as ever to cast me as a bastard. I wonder sometimes if you actually like me better that way. I wonder if it turns you on to see me as a priapic bastard who goes out of his way to fuck the nastiest woman he can find.” His voice hardened. “You've been very complimentary about my recent decency—but perhaps you're getting bored with it.”
“I'm trying to warn you about getting caught up again, that's all.”
“Cassie, is this because we slept together? Have I unwittingly outed you as a jealous harpy?”
“No!” I was stung. “I'm not jealous of Peason. I know you despise her.”
“In that case, please keep your nose out of my sex life.”
“I wasn't being nosy,” I snapped. “I've a perfect right to express my opinion of Peason. I've never made a secret of the fact that I hate her.”
“Grow up.” To do Fritz justice, I don't think he knew that I had fallen in love with him. “You're too old to use words like ‘hate'—get out of the fucking playground. Felicity's bitchy because she grew up in the family from hell. That's why she can't understand someone like Phoebe.”
I made my voice as rational as possible. “Yes, but you know what she's up to, don't you?”
“She wants to buy this house.”
“Yes,” I said. “And she wants to get it half-price.”
“What? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Fritz, wake up. If she moved in with you, she'd only have to buy out Ben.”
He looked at me blankly for a moment. “Don't be stupid.”
I couldn't stop now. “That's why she kept thrusting her tits at you, and doing that thing with her tongue.”
Fritz let out a snort of laughter. “You're demented.”
“I'm telling you, she's determined to seduce you. She knows you'll fall for the tongue thing eventually, because she seems to have some sort of electrical path to your gonads, which entirely bypasses both your heart and your brain—”
“You're ranting at me,” Fritz said.
I had to rant. I was ranting out a warning. “You don't know how
much she cares about money—and she's the world's biggest snob. I'm not denying that she fancies you—”
I had to make him believe that Peason would rob him and break his heart—and probably only let him go when she had ruined him for all other women. Not for nothing was I named Cassandra.
He was laughing at me, not very kindly. “You're hysterical. I ought to slap you.”
“I'm only saying that if she happens to beg for your hand in marriage, don't be too flattered—she's got her eye on your double bay windows and original cornicing.”
“You obviously didn't hear me the first time,” Fritz said, loudly and slowly, as if to an imbecile. “I am not getting back with Felicity. I have no intention of sleeping with Felicity.”
“Well—good.” My cheeks were hot. I was aware of being absurd and childish. Deep down, I really wanted a weighty declaration of eternal love. I couldn't stay without it. I felt I'd become a fool.
The fact was, I didn't trust him to resist her. I left soon afterward, clutching my box of relics, with a million miles between me and the man I loved.
“
I
don't feel like going out just at the moment,” I explained to Ruth, when she called. “I'm not fit to go out. When I see people, I behave like a nutcase.”
Ruth's steady voice gave no indication that she disapproved of terms like “nutcase.” “In what way?”
“Well, for instance, I managed to insult Fritz. I practically accused him of having an affair—and I know it's probably because we slept together that time, and I wanted it to be more than it was.” These days, I wasn't merely talking to Ruth. I was spilling my guts. She was the only person in the world to hear my loveless ranting and whining. Our conversations were now essential to me. She didn't build me up and cosset my ego, as darling Phoebe had done. But she definitely made me feel less of a loser. She braced me to deal with the world, and would not allow me to slide into despair.
Ruth said, “Try not to obsess about Fritz. It's not really fair to either of you. When you made love, you were both intensely vulnerable—I imagine the whole experience is still mixed up with the experience of the funeral. I still think you should be leaning more on your girlfriends. Make an effort to see them. I mean it, Cassie.” Her neutral voice firmed slightly. “This sort of depression overwhelms you, unless you fight it.”
I couldn't fail to be impressed by this, for Ruth certainly knew what she was talking about. Hadn't I lived under the shadow of her depression? And now she was warning me not to turn into her—at least, that was how I understood it.
For once, I would take her advice. I decided to organize a girls' night out. I'd done this many times in the past, and not thought twice about it. Now, it felt like a tremendous effort—all that phoning and leaving cheery messages, and pretending I was as busy as they all were.
We met at the usual wine bar—me, Annabel, Hazel and Claudette. I made a special effort with my clothes. I took my sexy Paul Smith shirt from the back of the wardrobe, scrubbed the stains off my smartest skirt and underwent the martyrdom of thin tights. It is always important to dress for your female friends, because they use your clothes to read the state of your mind and I was determined not to appear in the character of a desperate single. I was the only single person at the table.
First, we passed round the latest pictures of Claudette's baby daughter, in various adorable poses. Please don't get me wrong—I considered little Jessica perfectly beautiful, and quite saw why Claudette could think and speak of nothing else. But I did feel the cooing went on for rather a long time.
A few months ago, I would have been able to roll my eyes at Hazel, who never got silly over babies. What had happened to her? This evening, she pored over every photograph with a dreamy, half-witted expression that (I thought) looked odd with her fabulous silk cardigan and Prada handbag.
Claudette laughed, and accused her of being broody.
“Oh yes,” Annabel said, “Hazel's definitely fallen under the spell.”
“I have not!” Hazel protested. She was smiling, and not protesting (I thought) hard enough. “We've talked about it, that's all. Jonah's always telling me about the kids he sees on the Heath. He says he fancies being a dad.”
“As long as someone else earns all the money,” I said cattily. I was famous for my catty asides about useless north London males.
Nobody seemed to hear me. Hazel, Claudette and Annabel all exchanged radiant looks—the freemasonry of happy coupledom.
“I don't mind being the breadwinner,” Hazel said. “In fact, I like it. Jonah never nags me about the hours I work. He says my mania for work is part of me, and he thinks successful women are sexy.”
“Come on, Hazel,” I said, “tell us the truth. Isn't he just a tiny bit chippy?”
This was, frankly, scary. Instead of going into her usual barrage of complaints about the latest dreadful boyfriend, Hazel's face was still suffused with that sickening, enviable glow.
“Oh, but Jonah's different. He's been so lovely, so supportive—even my mum likes him. He has such a sense of what's really important. I knew that the very first time I met him, when we spent practically the whole night reading Tennyson and Browning to each other—well, Cassie was there, she caught us at the very moment of falling in love.” She looked round at us all, smiling in a new way. “The thing is—”
The thing was that Hazel and Jonah were getting married.
Claudette and Annabel both went, “Ooooh!”
“Congratulations,” I said, as heartily as possible. “And please make sure Betsy's sitting down when she hears—she may very well explode with joy.”
I ordered a bottle of champagne, hoping this would mask my lack of ooh-ing. We all toasted the happy couple, but it was rather a letdown. Annabel was pregnant and Claudette was breast-feeding, and they only sipped at the champagne. Hazel was too fulfilled and happy to cane the booze in the old way. I drank most of it, and spent the rest of the evening covering the fact that I was plastered. I truly didn't want to be a dog in the manger, but I couldn't help feeling I had fallen off the edge of the world. It was probably a judgment against me, I thought, for being so smug when I was with Matthew.
“Now, Cassie,” Claudette said. “How's your love life these days?”
“You should make your play for Fritz Darling,” Hazel said. “Quick, while he's still available.”
“Oh, I don't know about that,” Annabel said. “I think he's spoken for.”
I was glad everyone looked at her, and missed the ghastly expression my face went into before I could wrestle it back into polite interest.
Annabel sighed. “It looks as if Poison Peason is back on the scene. Such a shame.”
“She was talking about buying the house,” I said, in a faint voice. “That's all, surely.”
“Oh, she still wants the house—she appeared in the basement yesterday with a tape measure. God knows what she's planning. And she
had one of those posh books of paint samples. Ben got annoyed, because she kept dropping hints about us moving out before the babies come.”
“Yes, but her buying the house doesn't mean Fritz is sleeping with her,” Claudette pointed out.
Annabel giggled. “We heard them at it.”
“Doing it?” I tried to look prurient instead of distraught.
“Not half. Right over our heads, while we were having supper.” She giggled again. Everyone giggled, except me. “It was sort of like this—” Annabel let out a series of theatrical orgasm noises. “We had to go into the bathroom so they wouldn't hear us laughing.”
“You're kidding,” Claudette said. “Has the woman no shame?”
“Of course not—come on, you remember her from school. She hasn't changed.”
“Neither has Fritz, obviously,” Hazel said. “I'd like to meet the woman who could make
him
settle down.”
Annabel put her hand on my arm. “You'll laugh at this, Cassie—but me and Ben hoped he'd get together with you.”
“Oh well.” I should have won an Oscar for my breeziness.
“She can do better for herself,” Hazel declared. “We have to find someone for Cassie, girls. She's the only one of us who hasn't found her true love.”
 
I cried in the taxi on the way home. I have since been told that crying in taxis is part of the female condition, but I had never done it before. I was heartbroken and furious. Bloody Fritz. Curse and damn him. Never going to sleep with Peason? Huh. I should have made him put it in writing. He was weak-willed and shallow, and probably deserved her.
Mostly, however, I was heartbroken. I knew Fritz too well to stay furious for long. I had seen his courage and his kindness. I had ached over his tenderness with Phoebe. Through all that sad time, he had been my best friend and right arm, the one thread of sanity connecting me to the world. I knew that love went very deep with him, and I couldn't understand why he was wasting something so rich and rare on Felicity Peason. I mopped up rivers of tears, until my single frayed tissue was a sodden scrap.
The taxi driver was nice to me—apparently, they often are. When I climbed out and paid the fare, he said, “You okay, love?”
“Oh, yes. Fine.”
“You take care, then.”
“Thanks.”
His kindness hurt me by reminding me of my loneliness. By the time I let myself into my flat, I was sobbing. I lay down on the sofa without taking my coat off, and wept as I had never wept over Matthew. It was clear to me now that losing Matthew had damaged nothing more than my pride. Losing Fritz was like having my heart torn up at the roots—until now, I hadn't realized how I'd been banking on winning him in the end.
I longed for Phoebe. I knew exactly what she would have done. She would have let me cry, and said “poor darling,” until she judged I was ready for a cup of tea. Then she would have said something about Fritz, and what an idiot he was to choose Peason instead of me. She would have reminded me that I was only young—yes, far too young to be deciding everything was over. It was a great maxim of Phoebe's that true love existed for everyone, and could strike at any time.
“There's nothing wrong with dreaming about falling in love,” she told me once. “It's perfectly natural. Wanting love doesn't make you any less of a feminist. Needing it doesn't mean you're weak. We weren't meant to be alone.”
She had gone on to remind me (this was just after I split up with Matthew) that I didn't know myself well enough to recognize the right man when I saw him.
“Keep an open mind,” she had said. “And don't lose hope. You have to hope that life will change, or you'll never change anything.”
Phoebe was a natural optimist, and her stubborn streak gave her optimism an edge of steel. The sun would come up, things would get better, people would see the error of their ways, and faithless lovers would either repent or be forgotten. She was sure the world would come right eventually—and for her, it always did. Phoebe said she was unusually fortunate. I thought she attracted good fortune to herself because she deserved it.
I struggled into a sitting position, feeling a little less hopeless. If
Phoebe had been here with me, I thought, Cousin Molly would have come up by now. Cousin Molly was Phoebe's standard story of hope triumphant. Phoebe loved to sermonize. Her moral stories always followed the same meandering course, and could not be hurried or varied. We heard them over and over again. I loved the repetition, and so did Jimmy and the boys, though they couldn't resist teasing her. I settled more comfortably against the cushions, running the famous example of Phoebe's cousin (on her mother's side) through my memory.
Cousin Molly had fallen in love with a young naval officer, but he had not loved her in return. Instead, he had waltzed off with some showy blonde—“a Diana Dors type,” according to Phoebe—and poor Molly's heart had been broken. She knew she would never love again. She resigned herself to a life of dreary spinsterhood, delivering the parish magazine and taking care of old Uncle Angus.
At this point, Phoebe would usually have to stop the story, to ask Jimmy, in a soft and sorrowful voice, why he was laughing. For some reason, the mention of “old Uncle Angus” always sent Jimmy and the boys into hysterics. Dignified and slightly reproachful, Phoebe would address the rest of the story to me. The boys were naughty to laugh, she said, because Molly had a terrible time after her heart was broken. She nearly died in a car accident, and had to have her left leg amputated just below the knee—“Boys! Jimmy! Really! It isn't at all funny, how could you laugh?”
Here, Phoebe's voice would rise slightly. We had plumbed the depths of the valley, but now we were heading up Happy Ending Hill. Two long years passed. Then, quite by chance, Molly ran into her naval officer again—and this time, he fell properly in love with her, despite her injury (perhaps, Phoebe once remarked, because being in the navy made him more used to one-legged people). Two weeks later, on the golf course at Fort William, he had proposed. Which just went to show that you should never lose hope, because thirty-five years later Cousin Molly was still happily married and had three children. (“Oh Ben, don't be silly—of course they all have two legs.”)
I couldn't think about Cousin Molly without feeling comforted. I sniffed deeply, limply and almost pleasingly tired. It was possible that I was overreacting about Fritz. All kinds of things were possible—well,
look at Cousin Molly. Maybe I should saw a leg off. I stood up, removed my coat and made myself a cup of tea.
I only saw it when I was drinking my tea in front of the television. I had been depressed because I couldn't hear Phoebe's voice. But perhaps remembering the sayings of the dead, and having an instinct for what they would have said in certain circumstances, is what people mean when they say they have “heard” them. It wasn't like having a vision, or seeing a ghost. There was nothing mystical about it. I was simply remembering with particular intensity. But the end result was that I went to bed comforted. So in some sense, Phoebe had been with me, and I had heard her.

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