Lying Together (15 page)

She said nothing. Just sat on the bed, gripping the edge, the small white hole in her tights now the size of a pound coin. He swept up the flowers with a vicious movement. She said in a quiet voice: ‘I'm afraid they're dying.'

He said, ‘Yes. It's too hot in here. I should have known better.' And he closed the door.

Going down in the lift with its cheap fake wood and pinkish mirrored panels, he felt his anger begin to cool. The hotel was soulless and opaque. As he descended floor by floor, the doors pinging and opening on empty corridors, he kept visualizing Morella sitting alone on the chintzy bed. What would she do with herself tonight, tomorrow? And what would she do for the rest of her life? He'd been her last chance, she said. Her last chance on her flight from the dreadful past, the nightmare of incarceration and halfway houses. He imagined her opening her wash-bag, taking out a razor and cutting herself neatly across her wrist:
Put out the light, and then put out the light
.

A cold horror came over him. He'd been stupid and immature, expecting anything romantic from Morella. She hadn't come to find him because she cherished memories of the old days, but because of what he could offer – Mr Commuter with his expensive cashmere coat. She'd responded simply, as she'd always done; taking what she could, and giving the only thing she had to give. Morella had no scrap of romance in her soul:
It's so much balls.
He felt a gale of compassion for her.

In the foyer he eluded the knowing glance of the receptionist, went straight to the telephone box. Sue answered. Her voice sounded warm and real, and for the first time that evening he felt he could breathe properly. ‘I've run into an old friend from Cambridge,' he said. ‘She's in a bad way, needs a bed for the night. I've offered. D'you mind?'

‘Of course not.'

‘And I've got you some flowers.'

‘Really?' He could hear her smile.

STAND WELL BACK

I
wish I'd never mentioned the damned thing now. I never intended to. Just the usual first Thursday of the month drink: how's the wife, how's the job, that sort of thing. But Tim is the kind of bloke who gets things out of you. He always has, ever since we were schoolboys. His knowing silences always made me feel I had to say the first stupid thing that came into my head. The quieter he was, the more I blathered. The more I blathered, the more he smiled. It's been that way, more or less, for twenty-five years.

I eye him now across the table. His thinning hair, his worn shirt, his cockeyed spectacles, his worthy corduroy trousers – they're everything I loathe. He's gone down in the world since those prep-school days but he still behaves as if I'm the one who has to be patronized, even though I could buy and sell him three times over. It's not as if we have anything in common any more. So why do I go on meeting him – a whole evening once a month just so I can go away feeling terrible? My sister Di says it's survivor's guilt, whatever that means.

Tim's going on about blood being thicker than water. I can't believe it. ‘No,' I say. ‘Absolutely not.' I don't like to think about blood anyway. It's not what I associate with – well, with the whole Jane thing. So I object to Tim bringing it up. Of course I know why he has. Because although he helped me out, he never approved in the first place. And now he has a chance to say: ‘I told you so.'

He puts his fingertips together, leans forward. ‘Altruism is all very well, but there's a connection. An inviolable connection. And now it's caught you out.'

‘Bollocks.' I start to get up. I've had to fit Tim in between the office and a Kennedy concert. It starts at eight, and I hate being late. ‘I should never have told you. I knew you'd be critical.'

‘Not critical, Matthew. I just feel you're not being honest with yourself.' He gives me the pitying-but-encouraging look. He's adept at it. He's done a course on it. He's someone with ‘counselling skills'. It makes me want to puke. As does the Welsh rarebit congealing on my plate with its forlorn sprig of parsley. Tim seems immune to bad food, having just wolfed down an enormous baked potato filled with bright orange chicken tikka and some kind of bean. A hint of orange clings to his upper lip now. His glass of Speckled Hen sits untouched.

‘Honest? For God's sake, Tim! It was a simple transaction. That was the whole beauty of it. I'd no right to barge in after all this time.'

‘You may have been a bit, well, rash. But you must see you had a kind of right. An
emotional
right.' (Tim's strong on emotions, the inner child, all that jazz.) ‘All you've done is woken up to the implications at last.'

‘You would say that, wouldn't you?' I laugh. Tim's the complete New Man, carrying his kids around with him in some sort of papoose, changing nappies on any horizontal surface to hand, reading bedtime stories for hours on end, volunteering for playgroup duty, and so on and so forth. Three little girls, all under five, and a fourth (sex unknown) on the way.
We can't afford it, but we'll manage somehow. Children are the most valuable part of us, aren't they?
(Smile, smile) Ugh. I keep away from his little nest of domesticity as much as I can. It was a nice house once, Victorian, elegantly proportioned. Now it's a kind of kindergarten. The kitchen's impossible, even for a snack – awash with crayons and half-eaten cereal, littered with scribbled drawings which shed bits of glitter and dry macaroni all over the floor. The tiles are a death trap of rolling plastic and spilt drinks. It seems that every time I go, the girls (Tabitha, Freya and Edith) are bouncing about on the sagging sofas with cereal bars in their mouths, dribbling gunge onto my trousers, tugging my jacket out of shape in four different directions at once. In the midst of this, Saint Tim smiles pityingly at me:
Look what you don't have.
I play the game, make jokes, pretend to be a good uncle (and I'm remarkably good at it), but I can't wait to get out. Get back to peace. Privacy. Self. Yes, self, I admit it. I have no problem in admitting it. It may sound smug, but I like my life the way it is.

Tim cocks his head. ‘But I'm right, aren't I? Blood
is
thicker than water.'

‘You were always one for an original phrase.' I'm sneering again. Tim tends to make me sneer. I could be really hard on him but something always inhibits me from going too far. We have our roles, I suppose. I grit my teeth.

‘You know it's not originality that counts, Matthew.' He smiles patiently, as if he has no idea how trite he's being, as if he's saying something incredibly worthwhile. Instead of which he sounds like a woman's magazine, and a downmarket one at that. ‘It's not the
phrase
, is it? It's what lies behind it. That's why you're upset.'

‘I'm not upset, for God's sake!' But I can hear my voice rising up the scale, and I'm beginning to have that odd feeling again. This thing must really be getting me down. I grope for my wallet. ‘Look, I want to get
out
of this thing, not delve in deeper. Anyway, I've no time for your little homilies – I'm meeting Julia in the foyer in half an hour.' I pull out a ten pound note. Eating with Tim is always cheap, but he insists on paying half, counting out his change in the tray of a little leather purse. I've given up trying to argue.

Tim pats my arm, gently depositing some chicken tikka on the elbow of my new suit. ‘You're in denial, Matthew. But believe me, it won't go away.'

I'd been mad even to risk it, although of course I never intended to. But when the Chief said we needed to go over to Charlie Gray's home ground if we were ever to get him on board for the Runsgate development, that was fine by me. I don't think I thought twice about it being Finsbury Park. Because, as I kept telling Tim, it honestly didn't bother me. I'd told Jane I'd keep away, and my word is my bond.
You're so beautifully old-fashioned
, she'd said, kissing my forehead.
We're so very, very lucky
. I admit that in the early days there'd been the occasional telephone call, the odd scribbled note. I think Jane and Barbara had felt obliged – Barbara to a lesser extent, I imagine. But over the months, communication had stopped. And I'd been relieved.

So all Finsbury Park meant to me the day before was a business venue, and a pretty inconvenient one at that. I was mainly concerned that we wouldn't be stuck there all day, given the problems Charlie Gray was throwing up. I wanted to get done quickly and get back early. All my thoughts were on that. It looked like being a warm evening and I fancied sitting out on my balcony with a glass of Rioja, with the Thames in the distance and the early rush hour glittering past beyond the trees. As long as Nick Crisp didn't let me down with the figures and allow Charlie to spin things out till five o'clock. In the event Charlie made no bones. Agreed with all our projections. Thanked us for our hard work. End of story. And there we were out on the front steps at three o'clock in the afternoon. Free.

The weather by then was so glorious it seemed downright criminal to rush straight back into the stale dirt of the Tube. Even more so to share a taxi with Nick, whose main topic of conversation is the Arsenal. I decided to take a walk, a breath of fresh air after that cooped-up office with its smell of charred coffee and overheated copying machines. I left Nick to his own devices, and set off. When I came to the station, I turned left. I swear I might as easily have turned right, but the left looked more inviting. Sunnier, I suppose. I couldn't possibly have recognized anything; it was two years since the other time, and anyway, Tim had done all the navigating, getting lost, and calmly admitting that he didn't know this part of London ‘all that well' and had only come to offer me ‘moral support'.

So, although it was Finsbury Park, it might just as well have been Timbuktu. My thoughts were on the moment. Entirely on the moment. If I thought ahead in any way, it was to anticipate that early evening drink, or maybe a meal at Giuseppe's with Pippa or Isabel.

I walked on, following my nose, enjoying the freedom of an afternoon off. I crossed a little park and turned down a pleasantish road, thinking where I might go to pick up a taxi, when I saw it – the street name. It was framed neatly against a background of privet:
Primrose Crescent
. The name had always reminded me of Jane, especially the first time I saw her in the basement café at the Courtauld when she looked so small and pale and delicate. She'd been wearing a huge furry coat, and silver earrings. We'd taken to each other straight away.

‘Are you sure you're not in love with her?' Tim had kept asking afterwards.

‘Are you mad?'

‘You talk about her a lot.'

‘I always talk about women.'

‘Matthew, this is not the same.'

‘May I remind you, I am going into this with my eyes open.'

‘So you think. But there'll be consequences. You'll see.'

Of course that was the moment to have turned back, poised on the corner of the street. I did think of it. I knew it was the sensible thing to do. But it was such an extraordinary coincidence that it seemed somehow perverse not to take a peep. And I
was
curious, I admit. I told myself it would do no harm just to pass by the door, just satisfy myself with the look of the place. I walked down the road. Then, when I got to the door, my feet seemed to stop of their own accord. And my hand went to open the little gate, and next thing I found myself walking up the path. It was the same time of year as before, and I recognized the creeper growing up the wall by the door – little white star-shaped flowers that I'd stared at so intensely that first time, waiting for the door to open. Not that I'd been nervous; just a little embarrassed. Tim, of course, had fussed around as if it were going to be him, not me, with the clean jam jar in the upstairs bedroom.

I found myself knocking, the same little brass knocker shaped like a leprechaun. They were bound to be out, of course, on such a lovely day. Then I heard a footstep inside, echoing on the tiled floor. I started to panic. Jane could have changed; all sorts of things could have changed. The door opened. It was Barbara.

‘Hi, there,' I said, rather too gaily. ‘It's Matthew – Matthew Mulholland.'

‘Yes. I know who you
are
.'

Her dark brown eyes were blank with hostility. Words deserted me and I blustered something about being unexpectedly in the neighbourhood and feeling it was rude not to drop in. I felt pathetic, the schoolboy with a useless excuse. It was like being back at school, except Tim wasn't there to back me up. I made what I hoped was a wry face. ‘Probably not a good idea. On reflection.'

‘No.' She didn't help me out.

‘No. Yes. Sorry.' But I still stood there; a formal idiot with a briefcase, wilting a little from the heat on the back of my neck.

And, perhaps for politeness, she conceded: ‘You'd better come in, I suppose.'

‘No, it's okay. Well, just for a minute if that's all right.' I stepped into the tiled hallway. She closed the door.

‘They're not here. If that's what you came for –'

I tried to tell her I hadn't come for anything.

‘– but they'll be back soon, and I don't want you here then. I don't want to be petty, Matthew, but that was our agreement, wasn't it?'

‘Yes, yes, of course. You're right, of course.' I was ridiculously anxious to placate her, remembering how awkward it had always been between us. Jane used to laugh and say Barbara was inclined to be jealous:
Silly old sausage
.

She took me to the back of the house – the kitchen-diner, immaculate and bright with Jane's embroideries and cushions. Coloured building blocks were neatly stacked in a wooden tray. The garden beyond was full of flowers and shrubs. Barbara was a trained gardener, of course, and I'd always imagined her digging away in some market garden while Jane kept house and entertained visitors. In fact, she was wearing an apron and I could smell baking.

‘Earl Grey, if I remember rightly?' She took a blue cup down from the dresser.

‘That's right.' I was beginning to breathe again. Social niceties are very soothing. ‘That's very clever of you. After all this time.'

‘We know all your preferences off by heart.'

They'd written everything down, I remembered that now. It was all part of their philosophy. I'd filled in a whole questionnaire. Jane had told me the first time we met, what they were looking for
. It has to be personal,
she'd said.
But you need to keep well away afterwards.
I'd said there'd be no trouble there; I wasn't into complicated relationships. And I was certainly not into children. I told her about Tabitha, Freya and Edith, making such appalled faces that she laughed.
Oh, Matthew,
she'd said, tucking into a sandwich.
You're just our type!

I'd never been sure whether Barbara agreed. I often felt she disapproved of me, although we'd only met three times and I'd always been on my best behaviour. And when I'd looked over the questionnaire – well, without seeming to be too conceited – I felt it gave quite a good account of myself. Good education, good career, healthy, cultured, literate, plenty of interests, a full social life. She had nothing to complain about.

She turned to me suddenly. ‘We'll fight you, you know, Matthew.'

I stared at her strong fingers around the cup, imagined for a wild moment she was going to hit me in the face.

‘We'll go to court – anything – if you try to get him back.'

So that was the problem. I laughed with relief. ‘God, no. Nothing further from my mind –'

‘Why have you come, then?' She put her other hand over the first to steady the tremble. She was really worked up. I felt quite surprised.