Boys and Girls (39 page)

So no, the garden is not and never will be
finished
, per se, but dear me, I am so very pleased with all that now I have here. And I am well aware, don't worry, that gardeners, particularly recent and ardent converts, can easily become the most dreadful bores on earth, so I am not about to deliver a lecture, nor to conduct the grand and endless tour, replete with commentary and a bewilderment of Latin terminology. Let it simply be said that the garden is on four quite separate levels: the terrace, that's the first thing, proper York stone – that opens out from the atrium doors – quite heaven on a summer's evening with a glass of champagne, I so can't tell you – and then there is this very attractive baluster, also stone, and a few steps down to the lawn, practically perfect now that one of Herb's workers has finally got rid of the clumps of moss and even a
molehill
, if you can believe. I practically lost my mind when I saw the mound of earth almost tauntingly bang at the lawn's very centre and immediately wanted to lay waste to the creature or creatures responsible – gas, guns, bombs, whatever it took. Herb, he said I was making a mountain out of it, and we laughed about that. Made sure he got rid of it, though. So this lawn, it's bordered, will be, by a low, thick and cubic hedge – Herb says it'll grow really quickly and I believe him about that because already the shape and breadth are quite plain to see. There's a ha-ha beyond, so you can't from the house see the seemingly natural meadow beyond – you have to just come upon it, strolling. It's so very beautiful – willow, honeysuckle, the splatter of poppies, all sorts of wild grasses and those tight and wiry little clusters of yellow, the name's just gone from me at the moment, but you know what
they are when you see them. Months of work and unspeakable sums of money to get something seeming as natural as that. The vegetable garden, the country garden, the swimming pool … There's a pergola with the sweetest little roof that just tips up at the corners like a Japanese pagoda. Conservatory, of course – divine for breakfast – and a little rustic summerhouse just before the trees that you can revolve to get the best of the sun, and then the shade. It's all very marvellous, and I love every inch of it. It makes me laugh when I think back to the Chelsea house – the obligatory pair of bay trees in Versailles boxes standing sentinel outside the front door, and at the back just a stunted mutation of a Lutyens bench, box balls in tall zinc cylinders and the most dreadful sheet of aluminium all down the rear wall, and over which water coursed, highly annoyingly, although more often that not it just didn't work, leaving as the focal point of the garden what looked like a piece of an aeroplane's fuselage. Just didn't think about it at the time. Black, he was asking me only recently – yesterday morning, coffee on the lawn – whether the agents had yet found a tenant for it, the Chelsea house, which had always been the idea, and I told him no.

It's the meadow I'm in now. There's a small wooden hut, heavily distressed in order to make it look not so much rustic and ancient, but more as if it had actually grown up from deep down in the ground, and in it we have all these traditional deckchairs – green canvas slings, though: nothing stripey. I am slumped in one of them now, seeing red through my eyelids, closed against the sun. My fingers and thumb are sliding over the silky cool of a petal as I trail down my hand into the long rush of grasses – I am trying by touch to assimilate its colour. Only a sensualist such as I could even dream of such a thing.
And so why, into such an Eden, must hellish thoughts intrude? Amanda. God curse the stupid little child. I have already spoken to Charles, my doctor, about the position she now finds herself in, and he assures me that this is easy, no problem at all – fixed up with a single phone call, private suite, nicest people, out the same day or else she can stay for as long as she pleases. Well yes – but it still has to be
gone
through, hasn't it? The whole thing. And I suppose her mother, she ought to be by her side? And Charles, he said to me – but Amanda, she's a minor, isn't she? Is this a situation that is involving the law? And I thought back to the boy's utter helplessness, Harry, the boy, and his credible surprise. I thought of his wide and open vulnerable face and troubled eyes, and then of his golden future (because at his age, all futures are that). And so no, I said: no. Not a situation that is involving the law.

I am, you know, going to go out again this evening. I'm rather looking forward to it. I got this most divine and silky floaty dress from Valentino – made for a warm summer's evening, so such a wonderful chance to wear it. It is a muted floral and one of the colours is a nearly fuchsia which but precisely echoes the shade of shoes I had bought just the very week before in Harvey Nichols, and neither was ever intended to match – it's just a happy coincidence. Serendipity. The falling of things, as if from the sky, and perfectly into place. And before, I shall light a dozen candles in my bathroom – Diptique, and this new one I've found in Penhaligon's – and give myself up to the deepest and hottest bath I can bear, with Nina Ricci bubbles, the kindest and the sweetest of all that I've tried. And imagine myself being borne away by the lapping waters to somewhere else and quite enchanted, where the light is brighter, and the warmth of love is all around. Because
still, there is a hole in me. I have all this, everything I planned, and still there is a hole in me. The practical side of my nature, that has been so utterly satisfied … and yet I have to face it: still there is a hole in me, and it must, just has to be filled, you see. Only a sensualist such as I could even dream of such a thing.

‘Out are you, Alan old man?'

‘Am, yes Blackie. Thought I would. Pleasant evening, and all the rest of it. Stroll. Stretch the legs a bit. You're very welcome to …'

‘No no. Perfectly content here with my book, you know, and the glass that warms. Rereading Hardy. Never tire. Spent a devil of an age tracking down my glasses. Can't tell you how good it is not to have to poke those bloody lenses into my eyes any more. Think I ought to have a pair in every single room … glasses, you know. Susie, she went off about, ooh – half an hour ago, I expect. Said she wouldn't be horrendously late. Looked lovely, I must say.'

Mm, thought Alan, I imagine she did. Hadn't actually seen her, this time. Didn't, in fact, know she was out. But lately, quite recently, she had taken to going out in the evenings – not every evening, no, but more than once or twice – and on the occasions when I was caught and assailed by the shock of her perfume, the glint of a necklace, the fall of her hair, the confident stride high up upon such daring heels and then the mouth, that mouth of hers, and just as the poet put it – roses filled with snow … at the times when I had been aware of the sumptuous fleetingness of her quite astounding presence amid the air that she scented, and then just the trail of it when she was gone, I had indeed noticed that yes, she did
look lovely, quite as Blackie had put it. More and more, to my mind, and flushed with a vigour I had long believed to be forever extinguished, a full and burgeoning, yet all the time secret glow that murmured of a second coming.

And then I was on a bar stool in the shabby old boozer that soon, I suppose, will be wrecked by making it splendid – patting a tubed Havana in my pocket and wishing to Christ I could smoke it. God it's so utterly
collapsed
, this place, not unlike a lot of the men here. No gastropub, this one – not at all family-friendly, no siree, not this one. Just men drinking, and wishing they could smoke. Weren't all men, of course – there was a knot of penniless students, looked like, over by the door, all dressed to be more or less identical, and very horribly indeed – ex-army fatigues intended for Titans, shoes that had been used for target practice, chewed-up hair, the odd bit of metal punched into their flesh, a smattering of tattoo – and the boys, Jesus, they were just as bad. But now look over there … on the stove-in and greasy banquette. Girl on her own, maybe a cider. Still looking over, you know – don't think it's just my wistful imagination that's hard at work here. Studying the classified in the
Evening Standard
 – possibly for a job, could be for somewhere to live. Just wander over, have a friendly word …

‘This is … quite a surprise, if you'll forgive me.'

She blinked up at him quite without expression as he stood over her table, his whisky in his hand.

‘You say something …?'

‘No no. It's just that … this bar. You know. Not exactly – the in place, is it? Not what you'd call, um – “happening”. If you know what I mean. Young people, young women – don't come in here much, that's all.'

‘Yeh. I'm beginning to see why. Look – I'm not interested, OK? So if you don't mind …'

‘Yes yes. No no. Quite. Sorry to, um … It's just that—'

‘Look – just piss off, all right? Jesus …'

‘Sorry, sorry. No offence. It's just that—'

‘Look you – I been nice. Now do you want me to call the manager?'

‘No – no need. I'm leaving. I'm off. Sorry to have, er. Yes. It's just that—'

‘Oh just fuck off, can't you? What's wrong with you? Just fuck
off
.'

So yes – did that: fucked off. Flew out of there, frankly – ears were purple with the burn of shame. And so there – one more lesson in life, and not one I should need to be taught: you don't buy and pay for it, it's not going to happen. Dashed into another pub – though not, alas, nearly so nasty – and wormed my way up to the bar for a whisky. Shaken, quite candidly. Hadn't had time to phone her, Helen, and now I'd got reality completely confused with all the other side of it. First signs of something, though nothing good. Or did I really think I'd be able to get away with it? Fool if I did: fool. Found myself confiding in a complete and total stranger all the details of my newest humiliation.

‘Mistake you made,' he growled back darkly – large man, red in the face, though blueish too: wore a fat gold signet ring whose dimpled inscription was all but eroded. ‘Mistake you made, son, was going for a young one. Pick and choose, they can – and face it, you ain't no kid. No oil painting neither, no offence. You want to go for the older ones, they're the ones what's grateful. Reminds me of a joke I heard one time.'

‘I have to go now,' said Alan quite hastily, wondering why
in God's name he was in fact standing here in the first bloody place.

‘Man – in a pub, right? Could be this very hostelry in what we're wossname. And there's this woman, OK? Sixty if she's a day – nearer seventy, might easily have been. And she turns round, right, and she says to him—'

‘Really have to, you know. Be off.'

‘No no listen – sit down, sit down. Have another drink. It's not long, it's not a long joke – it ain't one of them shaggy fuckers. So yeh – old woman, right? And she says to him, says to this bloke – Well how about it then, darling? Fancy it, do you? And the bloke, right, he's going Oh Gawd – do us a favour! I ain't that desperate, am I? And she's like—'

‘Look—!'

‘
Listen
! Christ. So she's like, don't be so bleeding hasty, sunshine: I bet you never done it with a mother and daughter before, has you? And the bloke, he gets to thinking mmmm – could be interesting, could be interesting. So he go off with her, right? Her place. And she gets in the door, OK, and she shouts up the stairs, “Oy Mum! You awake?!”'

And the man went redder and bluer and chortled very throatily, his eyes quite lost in pink and puffy folds.

‘Dear oh dear oh dear! “Oy Mum! You awake?!” Christ Almighty. Get it? Up the stairs, she's shouting, “Oy Mum! You awake?!” Killer, that is. Classic. Here – where you going …?'

Out of here, mate, that's for bloody sure. This whole evening, it's not really working. Cut my losses, I reckon: head back home. Best thing. Much earlier than I imagined it would be, but there you are. So what – I really did believe then, did I, that I could just saunter up to a girl in a bar, and the next thing I knew I'd be … oh God: imbecility. Doesn't bear thinking
about. Too too shaming. And particularly in the light of just everything, now. Well. Right. That's that. At least there weren't witnesses. Put it right out of my mind, that's what I have to do now. I'll just … what shall I do? I know – I'll go and disturb Blackie. Keep on chatting until he casts aside his Thomas Hardy with a gentle sigh of indulgence. Then we can have a drink. Yes, that's the plan – so I'm surprised, I suppose, when I go into the drawing room and there's Blackie, not in his usual chair and knee-deep in Wessex, but standing up and way over by the curtains, patting his considerable stomach and seeming rather agitated, looks like to me – although it could be, I suppose, just a touch of the recurrent dyspepsia (to which, he will tell you, he is a consummate martyr).

‘All right are you, Blackie?'

Black's eyes were flickering as he looked around and nearly at Alan.

‘Perfectly, perfectly. You're back, ah – soon.'

‘Yes well. Limit to how far one's legs are going to stretch, isn't there really? Fed up with reading? Book's on the floor.'

‘Yes. Dropped it. Can't bend down. Can't be bothered. And, um – you, you all right then, are you Alan?'

Alan exhaled, and fell back into an armchair.

‘Oh I
suppose
so – yes, I am really. I suppose I am. It's just that … oh, I don't know. Yes yes – I'm fine. Fancy a nightcap?'

Black looked about him, as if there might be lurking a furtive surveyor.

‘Well, um …'

‘Yes – course we'll have a nightcap. Have a bit of a chat. There's something, actually, I'd quite like to, um …'