Four New Words for Love (14 page)

‘She’s doing laps. I’m only allowed here for three. The dog will be back.’

‘Good. Mongrel?’ and before he can answer, ‘I wonder if the ability to sin disappears when you just don’t have the energy to act on it. Can you think a sin?’

‘I certainly hope not. If you can then everyone’s tarnished. Where did all this latent Catholicism come from?’

‘School.’ She gestures, indicating the surroundings. The movement exhausts her. ‘Taught by nuns. Back with nuns. You never escape the vestiges of a Catholic
education.’

‘I suppose George thought it vulgar or something.’

‘You’re trying to mitigate my lapse. It wasn’t George’s fault. George never thought anything. George has no spiritual faculty. Not like you.’

‘Please...’

‘Don’t be modest. Even though you are. George wasn’t to blame, at least for that. It was pure apathy. Do you know there’s a sin of acedia? Spiritual sloth. That’s
what the sisters taught us. Where’s the dog?’

And on cue he appears, still bobbing on the nun’s shoulder. Christopher gestures Sister Judith to come in. She is about to put the dog down when he opens the window.

‘She wants to see the dog.’

‘You’ll be getting me the sack.’

‘I thought God was your boss.’

‘That’ll be a joke then, Christopher.’

She brings the dog over to the bed. He has left a stream of saliva over one shoulder. Christopher wonders if he should point it out, hospital hygiene and all that. But then, no one’s
coming here to get better. Realising he is the focus of attention and something is expected of him, the dog wags its tail and barks obligingly. Felicity smiles. The dog is lowered to have its ears
ruffled.

‘I don’t want dog hairs on the bedding. Hell to pay with Mother Superior. I think it’s time for you to go, Christopher.’

‘I must have another lap yet.’

‘She’s tired.’ And so it proves. By curious cause and effect the dog has barked her to sleep. Sister Judith puts him down with a grunt, hands the clothes rope to Christopher
and shepherds them both out the window.

‘And for God’s sake get him a proper lead.’

He retraces his steps to the car, winds down the passenger window and trundles off down the drive, he, hunched forward over the steering wheel in concentration, the dog, tongue lolling, head
snapping from side to side as the lamp posts pass by.

There is a pet shop of sorts in the High Street. He stands in the twittering concourse explaining what he needs while the dog savours the smells. Next a visit to the Heel Bar, shoe repairs and
keys cut while you wait, a curious concept to Christopher, a man of solid welted brogues. Locksmith and cobbler. Discrete trades in his youth. What’s the connection he’s failing to
make? Are there others? Baker and glazier? Plumber and copy editor? Gynaecologist and plumber. At least that’s got an overlap. Fire eating air-traffic controller? While he ponders this the
young man inscribes an address on a metal tag. And now the dog looks legitimate, with its clerical collar and authentic lead, which slightly saddens him, for, let’s face it, he says to
himself, such cosmetic touches are for our enjoyment.

He is walking along the pavement when the accumulated strain of the months, thinking about Felicity, imagining her departure, projecting a future without that compassionate presence, takes its
toll. He is again suddenly exhausted, irritated with himself for being caught out by predictable fatigue. It is like a light going out. He casts around for a seat.

There is a fortuitous coffee bar at his elbow. If only, thinks Christopher, I believed in fate. It is a place he has passed two dozen times either without noticing or, when he does, thinking it
as somehow not for him. It is a place of chrome and blonde wood that he has dismissed as ersatz Scandinavian, staffed by the young for a clientele he has ceased to understand. Tieless professionals
shout for amiable drinks after working hours, a code of behaviour Christopher believes they have learned from beer commercials where everyone is remorselessly happy. He sees the café as a
place of contrived bonhomie. The prices deter the hooded elements who haunt the common. At this time of day the customers are mostly young mothers with infants, whose collapsed prams clutter the
entrance, and a scattering of affluent young who can afford to be redundant here in the middle of the day.

He negotiates the prams. The plentiful seating is illusory – at least for Christopher. There are a series of tall stools at the window nestled beneath a foot-deep bar where clients can
perch, rest their elbows and contemplate the foot traffic. Christopher decides not to risk it. A fall from that height could prove fatal. There is a number of what look like giant leather bean bags
on the floor. A teenage boy and girl occupy adjacent bladders and lean, exploiting the intimacy of gravity. To get on one of these Christopher decides he’d have to kneel down first. Getting
back up would involve a block and tackle. These are more hazardous than the stools. There are a number of couches, some still occupied. These aren’t hard-backed functional things. To
Christopher they look more like distended marshmallows, reminiscent of American sitcoms or those dreadful morning television talk shows. He casts about some more.

The only real options are the tables with hard chairs and arms for purchase. Most of these are occupied by the sorority of young mothers. He is the focus of a number of accusatory glares. They
are staring at him staring at the half-obscured bosom of one of their members, breast-feeding. The infant detaches. The nipple is mesmerisingly red and upright, reminiscent of a wine gum, the
aureole huge and glistening. His eyebrows shoot up. He realises he is being watched watching, shields his eyes with a hand that shoots up like a salute, mutters a general apology and sits at the
vacant table at his other elbow.

But is it vacant? There’s a smouldering cup with a creamy inch of residue that the waiting staff have also chosen to leave in case the customer returns. Shifting his position he can see
some official-looking papers in the chair, pushed under the table, invisible to the aproned girl spraying rainbows of antiseptic mist in the mid-morning glare and wiping the tables in moist
crescents. He is about to alert her to the papers when he is distracted by the movement at his side.

It is Vanessa, as preserved and svelte as the image he is slightly ashamed of having retained in memory. She is, of course, the owner of the coffee. He doesn’t know if she has come back
from the toilet to sip the residue or in from the street to retrieve her papers.

‘Vanessa.’

‘Christopher.’

‘Vanessa.’

‘Christopher.’

He gets purchase from the table top and begins to hoist himself up. She puts a hand on his shoulder and persuades him back into his chair.

‘Vanessa.’

‘Don’t start that again. It’s hardly Noel Coward dialogue.’

And for the first time in as long as he can remember he finds he is gently laughing. There is no noise, just a seismic tremble of the torso and a slitting of Christopher’s eyes. When it
subsides he finds he is embarrassed to find he is enjoying looking at her, her body, her neck, her face.

‘Sorry,’ says the rainbow girl, turning in a luminous sweep of careless antiseptic, ‘no dogs.’

Again he starts to stand. Again she reclines him with a hand on his shoulder. She is a woman who has learned to take her chances when she finds them and she will not have this opportunity wasted
by something as trivial as a hygiene regulation. She takes the dog outside and ties him to a bin. He scratches his ear with a hind paw and his testicles vibrate. Then he watches the cars.

Vanessa returns and looks steadily at Christopher, as if willing him to speak. Realising something is expected of him and feeling unequal to the moment he peers at the chalked-up table of fare
behind the counter. The array is bewildering.

‘What happened to just coffee?’

‘Tell me what it is that you want.’

He pauses before responding. Is this an iceberg question, seven eights submerged?

‘You know...’ he says.

‘No. I don’t. Tell me.’

‘The kind of thing you used to have when you went into a place that served afternoon tea but you ordered coffee instead.’

‘Those were dilute granules, unless you frequented a better class of place than I did.’

‘Yes. That sort of thing.’

She smiles at the rainbow girl and orders Christopher a flat white. He doesn’t see how she has deduced that from the blackboard. As an afterthought she points at her own cup for a
refill.

‘Things have moved on, Christopher.’ Is she still talking about coffee? ‘And anyway, how are you?’

‘Oh. You know...’ He is hearing himself say this, the kind of non-committal response he dislikes.

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘Well, I got rid of the cleaner. The garden seems to be mysteriously sorting itself out although I haven’t seen the gardener to pay him. Maybe there is a standing order to pay him I
don’t know about. Perhaps Marjory...’ At the mention of her name he hesitates. ‘I’m managing fine.’

Her steady look hasn’t wavered. His sense of discomfort is lessening. He wonders if this is what prey feel like, the moment of calm before being devoured.

‘I’m sorry about Marjory. I can’t pretend we got on but I’m sorry nonetheless. For you I mean. I didn’t know what to say when I heard. I thought of
writing.’

He casts his mind back to the rank of cards on the mantelpiece and window ledges, more populous than the mourners, and tries to attribute an identity to each. He can’t remember
Vanessa’s. He was sure it was there, now mulch, as his wife will eventually be. Christopher has always given Vanessa the benefit of the doubt, his weakness of empathy exerting itself again.
Marjory didn’t. Marjory disliked Vanessa because Vanessa refused to be simply a haberdasher. Vanessa breezed into the High Street with no ring, no past, and enough collateral to open a shop.
The Woman’s Guild vibrated.

Perhaps Vanessa was even aware of this. She kept the rumour mill churning by saying absolutely nothing. The truth was more ordinary and sordid, as it usually is. As a young women she had
cohabited with a dentist in Bristol, when such an action still turned heads and tarnished reputations. Her parents tacitly approved. They considered her a girl of limited abilities and fewer
options. Of an age and class that venerated the professions, they were so paralysed by respect for the family doctor that he attributed their silence to idiocy. Cohabitation with a dentist outside
marriage was preferable to working-class drudgery within it. Love didn’t enter their utilitarian calculation. The dentist agreed and so, without thinking about it, did Vanessa. She paid her
dues by looking nice and crouching before dinner most weeknights on the hearthrug, as he took her from behind while the Fray Bentos Steak and Kidney pie crisped to a turn. Three nights out of four
he would adjourn to the local, leaving her with the cold dishes and lukewarm semen, to return for News at Ten and a repeat performance.

It’s fortunate she had a libido equal to the task. It was the slackening of his penetrations that led her to believe he was otherwise being serviced, corroborated the following evening
when, facing the fireguard, he breathed ‘Charlotte’ into the small of her back. Charlotte was his receptionist. An unscheduled after-hours visit to the surgery found Charlotte in the
hearthrug posture, being pantingly referred to as ‘Jane’. Charlotte accepted these confusions better than Vanessa: it was an unenlightened time and her bonus reflected the proportion of
time spent on all fours. It turned out the dentist preferred
coitus a tergo
precisely because of his difficulty in putting a name to a face: one set of shoulder blades was the same as
another, and pumping away doggedly from behind he could let his imagination wander. So could Vanessa. At any one time there were three simultaneous copulations: the literal participants, the
dentist and his dulcinea, and Vanessa and the younger, handsomer, harder, more attentive man who existed out there somewhere beyond the rote of shopping, cooking and applying makeup, only to get
fucked like this face down in front of
The Magic Roundabout.
But at least her infidelities were confined to the mind.

He had been careful to drip-feed her money. She had no bank account and no rights. She let him stew while she calculated, and wrung incremental concessions out of him each time she crouched.
When he attended an amalgam conference in Galway, with Jane or one of her successors, she burnt his clothes, bent his golf clubs, poured sugar into the petrol tank of his Jaguar and left with her
portable life: a matching suite of luggage and a meagre amount of money. He hadn’t broken her heart but he had dented her self-esteem. She emerged from her first affair with immaculate teeth,
a regimen of dental hygiene practically American, a whetted sexual appetite and a desire to get on without ever being beholden to men. She had no delusions about her employment options and held
down a series of casual jobs and casual affairs, ending most liaisons when better employment beckoned.

From crouching like a tupped ewe she now preferred to kneel astride and look down. She looked down on a surveyor, a welder, a loss adjuster, the man who came to paint lines on the road, an
actuary, her postman. She was a sexual opportunist and her tastes were eclectic. She looked down on her GP, but fled in panic when he declared a love so intense he intended to expose the affair and
liberate them both. She didn’t love anyone and liberation was not something she believed possible in male company. The type of people she attracted she found predictable and egocentric, but
recognised decency when she saw it.

When her parents died her inheritance comprised a rented house she was obliged to clear. The tawdry furniture was auctioned for a pittance, and she was left with an enormous and unanticipated
collection of buttons her mother had amassed. Her dormant acumen was roused. Couturiers looked for some of these older specimens. The Sunday stall in Camden Market graduated to a modest shop: The
Button Boutique. It didn’t take a fool to make the link from price to location, and she was no fool. She had a talent for spotting talent and delegating. A disgruntled art student with a
flair for decoration was the first in a series of girls. They all left in amicable circumstances with a fierce sense of independence, the best thing she could teach.