Better Than This (14 page)

And so because and despite of everything that I felt, when Sally and her mother came in the front door I went out to meet them, and I kissed Ellen on her cheek and told her I was pleased to see her, and I must have sounded as if I meant it because Sally looked the slightest bit surprised as I kissed her too and asked if they’d had a good day, and I said nothing about the fact that they weren’t carrying any packages and I didn’t let on that inside my heart was breaking.

Marios was situated high in the hills. It was a place that Sally and I had found by chance not long after we’d moved into our house, and had been to regularly ever since, though the last time must have been six months or so ago. The view at night over the twinkling lights of Half Moon Bay far below, and the Pacific ocean, immense and awe inspiring when the sun sets, casting flames over the water like liquid gold from the hand of God, made for a romantic setting. I took the scenic route leaving 280 at Woodside and doubling back along Skyline Boulevard. The road twists and turns, dips and rises among wooded hills and valleys and the broad vistas of corn yellow grass of the Santa Cruz mountains. Sally’s parents sat in the back, Frank gazing out of the window placidly, Ellen tight lipped and silent. I knew she was suspicious. I was being relentlessly pleasant, which even Sally had commented on when we were getting ready.

“You said you’d like it if we got on a little better didn’t you?” I said. “Well, I’m trying.”

Since that afternoon Ellen had been cool towards me. Polite but reserved, and I gathered from this that if she had been attempting to persuade Sally to leave me, so far at least she had not succeeded. Sally was wearing a simple black dress with a scooped back and neck, with silver earrings and a fine silver chain around her neck. She looked beautiful. She was preoccupied, and gazed out of the windshield lost in her own thoughts.

We reached the turnoff that led up through the trees to the restaurant, the lights glimpsed through the woods in the fading evening light.

“Looks like a nice place,” Frank commented.

“I think you’ll like it,” I said. “Sally and I used to come here often.”

I parked in the lot, which was planted with rhododendron and bougainvillea. The air was laced with their scent, and as we approached the terrace the bougainvillea that grew entwined in the railing was lit with the glow from the lamps placed all along the front. Each plant had flowers of a different colour, from dark purple through lilac through to blood red and orange, and many of the limbs had twisted in among each other so that it seemed as if it was all one plant producing a wall of impossible colour. In fact it reminded me of a splatter painting a la Alice. Without the deeply meaningful title.

At the entrance Mario was hovering as usual. He liked to greet diners personally and then hand them onto his maitre d’. Throughout the evening he would pass unobtrusively among the tables making sure that everything was okay. If there was a complaint it was attended to without demur. He loved to see his customers enjoying themselves. They came to eat good food and drink fine wine and he made sure everybody had a good time so that when the bill came at the end of the evening they hardly even noticed the amount before they signed their credit card slip.

I had called the restaurant that afternoon and asked to speak to Mario himself. When I’d explained that I needed to make a good impression he’d told me to leave it to him. Now when he saw us he approached with outstretched arms, beaming a smile of welcome.

“My friends, it is so good to see you!” He stopped and took both Sally’s hands, and kissed her cheeks. His eyes drank her in. “Sally, you look beautiful. Nick, you are a very lucky man.”

“I know it.”

When he turned to Ellen he took her hand and bent to place a formal kiss. “No need to tell me who this lady is. I see where your daughter gets her beauty.”

I made the introductions and Mario shook Frank’s hand. “It is an honour to meet you, sir.” With a flourish he led us towards our table, dismissing the maitre d’ who hovered in the background. “I will attend to these people myself,” he said.

He’d put us in the corner of the room, by the window where we had both space and uninterrupted views. The tablecloth was almost impossibly white, the places laid out with gleaming cutlery and glasses that shone in the soft light.

“After you called this afternoon, Nick, I took the liberty of choosing a wine for you,” Mario said. “It is a Valpolicella, from a very famous estate. This vintage was the best they have produced in the last twenty years. I think you will like it, it is very special. I have only six bottles left.”

I murmured my approval when he showed me the bottle, and he produced a wine knife and removed the cork. I dreaded to think what all this attention was going to cost, but I was willing to go to any lengths to create the atmosphere for a pleasant evening.

The meal went as well as I could have hoped for. The food and wine were good enough to thaw even Ellen out a little, and afterwards Mario appeared and offered to show Sally’s parents the house at the back of the property, part of which he had converted into a kind of museum of traditional Italian cooking.

When Sally and I were alone at last I poured the last of the wine into our glasses. Sally had been a little quiet during dinner.

“You okay?” I asked her.

“Yes. I’m fine.”

“You seem a little distracted.”

“Sorry. This has been nice. Thank you.”

“For dinner?”

“For making an effort with my mother.”

I grinned. “She’s not so bad.” In fact I’d enjoyed a degree of malicious satisfaction being attentive to Ellen, in the knowledge that I was subtly undermining her efforts to persuade Sally to leave me. We fell silent for a moment or two.

“Nick…” Sally said tentatively. “I want to ask you something. Are you happy?”

I experienced a sense of dread. Conversations that began with such questions inevitably led somewhere I didn’t think I wanted to go. I wondered if Ellen had been making headway, that Sally was about to drop the bombshell. I tried not to let any of what I was thinking show when I answered her. “Define happy,” I said, and regretted it as sounding glib.

“I mean happy with me. Us. Our marriage.”

“Of course,” I replied as if the answer was obvious, but I saw that Sally was serious, and that trying to pretend otherwise was only burying my head in the sand even though I was afraid of where it would lead us. I reached across the table and took her hand. “Nobody is happy for every minute of every day, Sally. At least not outwardly.”

She peered questioningly at me. “But deep down?”

“Deep down I love you, just the same as I always have. That’s what’s important isn’t it?”

“I guess,” she agreed. “But you know that? Really? I mean you never have a moment of doubt?”

“Never.” I knew we weren’t talking about me. She wasn’t looking for reassurance, these were questions she was asking of herself.

“Maybe I don’t always show it. I can’t deny that things haven’t been perfect between us lately. I’ve had a lot on my mind, but underneath it all there’s nothing in my life that’s more important than you.”

She dropped her gaze, with a sad kind of wry smile. “I used to know you felt that way.”

“You don’t any more?”

“I don’t know. You say the words, but lately…” she gave a little shrug of helplessness.

I could let it go, I thought. Make some reassuring comment. I couldn’t fix what was wrong in our marriage over one dinner, especially when any minute her parents would be back. I had to take this a step at a time, not push forward and spill all of my feelings in a rush. I sensed how confused she was, and I knew Sally well enough to know that right now she wouldn’t be feeling good about herself. She was the kind of person who was likely to confess cleanly, but I wasn’t ready for that. I knew I may never be ready.

But I also knew we had to make a start. “But what?” I asked gently.

She met my look again, and it could have been the light but her eyes seemed to be shining unnaturally. “This last year or so I’ve sometimes felt that what’s important to you is your work. Making the agency a big success. Important to the point that’s all you really care about.”

“That’s crazy. Yes I care about it. I care about this deal with Spectrum because it could change everything for us, but that doesn’t mean I feel any less about you.”

“But you’re obsessed with it. You work so hard, you’re drinking too much, you’re tired. We never talk any more. It’s changed you.”

“It’s an important deal, Sally.”

That’s what I’m saying. How important is it? Is it more important than your friendship with Marcus? Our marriage?”

“No, of course it isn’t. Look I’ve made mistakes, I admit that and I can’t change them, but once we have that account everything will work out.”

“Maybe that’s partly what worries me,” she said quietly. “You always say that, as if Spectrum is a fix all. I just don’t think that it is. I didn’t ever think we’d live like this.”

“You want a family, Sally. I know that. In a couple of months we can start trying for a baby. You’ll feel differently then.”

“Will I?”

“Why not? Isn’t that what you’ve always wanted.” “Yes. But what about you, Nick? What is it you want?” “The same as you. I want us to be secure first that’s all.” She gave a little shake of her head. “Look around in the world. People start families all the time. Look where we live, the house we have, the cars we drive. How secure do we have to be? I think that’s an excuse you use that I’ve never understood.”

It was hard to explain. I didn’t even know if I could explain it. It was all tied up with my dad and my childhood and the way I’d felt when I was growing up, but these were things I’d never really talked about. Not even with Sally. It was a Pandora’s box of emotions that I didn’t want to open up. Some things we keep locked away, deep inside where the light never touches them, and though we know they affect everything we do, that they are a part of who we are we’re reluctant to look at them too closely. But of course I’d thought about all of this. Why it was so important to me to be successful, to make a lot of money. The easy answer was because I didn’t want to lose everything one day the way my dad did, because he was at the mercy of a big company with the muscle to put him under. But it wasn’t that simple. There were other issues, that were deeper and confusing and I hadn’t ever learned how to untangle them. I looked at Sally across the table and I wanted to try and tell her about the things I felt, but this wasn’t something I could do in five minutes. Even as I thought about it I could see her parents coming back.

I squeezed her hand. “Give me time.” Perhaps it was my expression, the nuance of my tone, but she appeared puzzled for a moment. Perhaps she half guessed that I knew she was thinking about leaving me. But then her parents returned and there was no time to talk any more. I stood up, smiling. “How was it?”

“Fascinating,” Ellen said, smiling at Mario. He was pleased I could tell, though something in Ellen’s tone made me think he shouldn’t take her compliment too seriously. We ordered coffee before I asked for the bill. I think Ellen sensed that something had happened while they’d been gone. She kept glancing at Sally thoughtfully.

When we left, Mario wished us goodnight at the door. “I hope we will see you again next time you’re in San Francisco,” he told Sally’s parents, and again he kissed Ellen’s hand.

I hung back to thank Mario for his trouble, and when I went down the steps Sally and her father had been sidetracked across the parking lot and were admiring a rhododendron, but Ellen was waiting for me and together we began walking towards the car.

“I hope you enjoyed yourself tonight, Ellen,” I said.

She turned to me and smiled coldly. “I hope you realize, Nick, that I’m not taken in by any of this.”

“I don’t follow.”

She continued to smile and spoke quietly so that we appeared to be having a civil conversation, though her eyes glittered with malice. “Oh, I think you do. Did you imagine you could charm me with a meal at an Italian restaurant run by that obsequious little man? You didn’t really believe that I could be swayed so easily did you?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Ellen.”

“I mean this sudden outbreak of pleasantness, Nick. We can speak honestly, Sally can’t hear us, and this has all been for her benefit hasn’t it?”

“I know she’d like it if we got on a little better,” I said with an air of innocence. “What other motive would I have?”

She regarded me with suspicion, but she didn’t say anything. I figured she had an idea that I knew. Perhaps Frank had said something about our conversation. I took perverse pleasure in the understanding that she desperately wanted to throw Garrison Hunt in my face but couldn’t. Sally would have sworn her to secrecy, and if Ellen said anything she risked the chance that Sally would never forgive her.

“I really hope we can get to know each other better in the future. We should learn to understand one another, Ellen.”

She threw me a look that could have reduced rock to ashes. “Let’s be clear. I don’t know what game you’re playing, Nick,

but the only reason that I’m going along with this charade is that for some unfathomable reason Sally still seems to think there’s something in your relationship worth salvaging.”

Despite our long history I was still surprised at her enmity and I shook my head. “You still can’t accept that Sally married me can you? Even now it sticks in your throat.”

“I told Sally that I believed she was making a mistake when she first told me she intended marrying you, and I’ve never seen any reason to change that view,” Ellen said.

“Why, because my family didn’t have money? Is that all that mattered to you?”

Across the lot Sally glanced our way, but Ellen smiled and spoke as if we were discussing the weather. “I wanted Sally to have opportunities. I wanted her to do something with her life.”

“You mean you wanted her to live the life you never had,” I said. “Did you know that Frank’s family fortune was about used up when you married him, Ellen, or did that come as an unpleasant surprise?”