Secrets (44 page)

‘I thought she was a ghost at first.’

‘I was stupid not to tell you. I was wrong not to tell you.’

‘I think I understand why.’

‘I could've saved all that hassle yesterday if I'd told you earlier.’

‘You'd have a longer night's sleep too.’

They laughed and tucked in close to one another even though it was hot at midday.

‘I wonder. If the same thing happened now, would a child be more willing to say something? Would they feel that nowadays their voice might be heard?’

Joe looked sorrowful and his voice was small, vulnerable, young. ‘You think no one would believe you. That's why you keep quiet.’

‘I believe you, Joe.’

‘I said to myself that families aren't worth it. I made myself believe that families bring only discontent. I closed myself off to any kind of meaningful relationship. And then one day, I opened the door and this scruffy girl and her immaculate baby came into the house and started almost immediately to unpick forty-four years of self-sufficiency. You undermined everything I'd trained myself to believe.’

He paused. ‘And that's a compliment.’

Tess laughed. She snuggled in close. She could watch the sea all day; watch the sea and sit on the pier next to Joe.

‘I liked my time with Emmeline yesterday,’ he said.

‘I liked your time with Em yesterday too,’ said Tess. ‘Perhaps today you might like to give her a bath?’

‘I do still remember the old bathroom, Tess,’ Joe said quietly. ‘But because of what you've done, the old bathroom seems to have been not just boarded up but demolished. It isn't at the Resolution any more, that's for sure.’

As they walked home, Tess slipped her arm through Joe's while he pushed the buggy and she pulled Wolf.

‘Does she ever – I mean, I don't mean to pry. But when you visit her – does she ever
talk
as the woman she was, not the one she's become?’

Joe thought about it. ‘It's difficult to tell, Tess. Sometimes I rather think she does – but whenever I see her, whatever state she's in, what I do see is a prematurely aged person whose twilight years are cursed with bitterness, with weariness and pain.’

She stole a glance at him. He looked sad and weary. Tess stopped him and looked at him and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him and then she said, smile! And when he did, she peered in very close, very serious, which made him laugh and enabled her to say, I see a lot of love in those eyes, Joe, a lot of love and happiness.

‘You see yourself, Tess,’ he said.

They lay in bed that night, Tess tracing patterns on Joe's chest.

‘Joe?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Are you tired?’

‘Are you horny?’

‘No – I mean, yes – I mean, I wanted to ask you something. But it can wait.’

‘Wait?’

‘If you're horny too.’

‘I'd love to be horny – but I'm exhausted.’

‘Well, can I ask you something then?’

‘What's up?’

‘Do you mind – if I still visit Swallows?’

Pause.

‘No – not any more. I've heard what you do there – with your tin foil and Vaseline.’

‘Clingfilm.’

‘I think it's amazing – commendable – what you do. But you could be paid, you know?’

‘I know. I know. But I hate money. It scares me. However, I'd like to work at what I'm good at – but I'd just like to do it voluntarily for the time being.’

‘Doesn't make much financial sense, you know? Especially with you trying hard to sort yourself out. I'm sure Andy explained all this.’

‘I know – but morally it does make sense to me. So do you mind if I continue?’

‘I don't mind.’

‘And yes, in the meantime, taking Andy's advice, I also need to do paid work. But you see Laura has a friend who works at a care home on Upleatham Street. And they'd have me – on the payroll. What do you think?’

‘I think that sounds good and sensible.’

‘Joe?’

‘Yes?’

‘Do you mind if I sort out the other shed? And can I paint it New England Slate Blue?’

‘Sure – go ahead.’

‘And can I paint your bedroom a warm taupe?’

‘Sounds fine to me.’

‘And if you're going to be around for the next few days, can I introduce you properly to Lisa?’

‘Sure.’

‘But you'll have to go off again, mid-week, will you?’ ‘Yes, I will.’ ‘But then, you'd be back here a week later – and you could stay home for a little while?’

‘That's right.’

‘Joe?’

‘Yes?’

‘Shall I let you go to sleep now?’

Chapter Forty

Joe left, telling Tess that if he just did another week or so abroad, he'd be able to work from home for at least a fortnight before a trip to the US. She'd said, go! go right away – go tonight! But he'd stayed in Saltburn for an extra day before leaving for France and Tess filled his time. He met Lisa properly and helped Tess lug stuff out of the sheds. He fixed the squeaky wheel on the buggy and took her to the Transporter Bridge in daylight. They crossed the river and came back via the Newport Bridge. She called it a thunkingly ugly green hulk of a thing, so he stopped the car and explained how it had worked and he changed her opinion by the time they were on their way again. He told her about Captain Cook and she listened intently. She told him about the Citizens Advice Bureau and he offered to have Emmeline. He took a series of photos of all of them and printed them off. With a sly smile, he put the one Tess took of him grinning for all he was worth, next to the photograph of him in KL.

SOS
, he'd written on the back.

‘What do you mean by
that
?’ Tess had protested. ‘It was a lovely day! You thought it was hysterical I'd come across all your old cross-country trophies in that box in the shed. Why the plea for help?’

‘Es. Oh. Es,’ Joe had said very slowly. ‘Saltburn-on-Sea. Mad woman.’

‘But it's Saltburn-
by-the
-Sea.’

‘Don't argue, Southerner.’

Tess had bided her time until he was in the garden and so was she and the hose was to hand. ‘That,’ she said, squirting him smartly between the shoulder blades, ‘
that's
for SOS.’

‘That,’ he said, grabbing the hose and squirting her back, ‘that's for frightening the dog and the child.’

But when Joe and Tess looked at them, the dog and child were regarding the grown-ups with expressions that acted for their limited language to say, ‘Happy you may be – but you two are very peculiar and very wet.’

When Joe had packed to leave, Tess had told him about the letter she'd written to him a lifetime ago four days previously. She'd presented him with the scruff of pages but he'd closed his hand around them, around hers.

‘But there's nothing you need to prove to me that I don't already feel.’

‘But it's a sort of – love letter.’

He'd smiled. ‘I've read it already,’ he told her gently, ‘I know it off by heart. It's written all over your face.’

She'd looked a bit miffed.

‘I will take it now, if you want me to,’ he told her. ‘Or you could keep it here. Keep it for a time when I piss you off and you doubt what you feel for me. Then you can read it to remind yourself that you loved me.’

‘OK,’ she shrugged, ‘but I'll put it in the toby jug on the dresser for now.’

And there it was, Joe observed as he had a last cup of tea before he left. There it was next to KL with SOS propped against it.

And here he was in France. Working abroad again, where the pattern of his life, the easy tessellation where all the elements slotted into each other whichever way he looked at them, could so easily have been repeated.

He'd gone directly to site. Progress, since he'd last been there, was pleasing. The great pillars were almost complete and the timing was perfect in terms of weather and the generous amount of daylight in June. The timing wasn't so great when he bumped into Nathalie. She came right between him and the hotel he was headed for across the square.

‘I didn't know if you were around,’ he said a little lamely.

‘Of course I am around,’ she said. ‘Where else would I be?’

He joined her for a drink because he couldn't find a way to refuse. And then they finished the bottle. And shared another. And then he said he mustn't drink any more on an empty stomach after a long day. And she said she'd already made a cassoulet – it only needed heating up. So Joe found himself where he hadn't intended to be again. And if Nathalie had her way – which in his experience, she usually did – then the cassoulet would not be the only thing heating up in her apartment.

And the pattern would be repeated, all the elements of his life slotting into each other again. So easy. The story of his life, thus far. The habit of a lifetime. Why break the mould?

She snaked her arms around his neck, pushed his legs apart a little so that she could enclose his thigh between hers. He put his hand on her waist because he really wanted to ease her away but when her lips found his and her tongue darted along them, for a split second he pulled her against him. Suddenly, he didn't like the taste. He didn't like the feeling – his cock was hard and he hated it.

It was gone eleven and he thought how home was an hour behind. Back at home, it was still only ten o'clock and none of this had happened yet. The present in England was the past in France. He thought how the present in France would be England's future. But whatever he did, whenever he did it and wherever he was, he couldn't turn back the clock. In the here and now, his hands were still on Nathalie's waist. In the there and now, Tess was at home.

It was time.

Joe pushed Nathalie away.

‘What's wrong?’ ‘Look – I need to talk to you, Nathalie.’

‘There is a problem?’

‘It's not a problem – actually, it's the opposite. It's the solution. Nathalie – I've found someone – someone I want to be with.’

‘I know I am not your only one – but that's OK for me too, you know,’ Nathalie said archly.

‘I know.’ He paused. ‘In the past, that's why you and I have been so – good. But it's different now.’

‘You have fallen in love?’ She sounded incredulous.

‘Yes,’ said Joe, ‘I have fallen in love.’

‘She doesn't need to know,’ Nathalie shrugged. ‘There's no way she can find out. What she cannot know cannot harm.’

Joe shrugged back. ‘That's not the point any more.’

‘OK. So we fuck now and say goodbye. You can go home and kiss and make up later.’ She ran her finger slowly up the shaft of his cock, still hard and delineated behind his trousers. ‘No one gets hurt.’

He stepped back and pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his trousers. ‘The thing is, Nathalie – for me, it's not about having a secret. It's no longer about getting away with it, it's about not fucking around with what I have.’

She looked confused. ‘Love is love, sex is sex – you are a guy. Guys can separate this. That's why you like me so much, because I think like a guy too.’

‘You're right – it
is
about love. And it
is
about sex. But it's about not wanting to have secrets from the girl I love who has recently become the only girl I want to have sex with. I'm sorry. Look, I ought to go. I should take my stuff from here, too.’

Nathalie blew through her lips and swept her hand about as if Joe's proclamation was on a par with an annoying fly in the room.

‘The hotel is shit – you will have only a small room. Stay here. Stay with me. We don't have to fuck if you say you don't want to.’

Joe knew the hotel wasn't so great – he'd stayed there before he'd met Nathalie.

‘No, honestly – it is better for me to stay there. It's where I want to be.’

There was a single bed and it was very hard. Everything else about the hotel room was thin. The walls, the mattress, the towels, the overly-perfumed soap wrapped in waxy paper, the camel-coloured veneer of the bedside unit, the chair, the table, the cupboard. But Joe felt comfortable. He'd give Tess a call in a while but for the moment, he was content to lie on the small bed and let the facelessness of the room serve as a blank canvas for his thoughts.

There had been so many revelations recently for him – bare facts that carried with them great emotional profundity. The details of Tess's dire financial predicament made him long to help her. Hearing the truth about Dick caused him some distress; feelings of intense pity, anger too, but also deep pride for how she'd coped and triumphed. Discovering her visits to Swallows, he'd felt extreme consternation – which he realized only later masked pure fear. And then he'd been able to face that fear head on.

It was this last element that had made Joe feel like a superhero. He had run away – once more repelled from home – and then, in the departure lounge, he had stopped running. Standing waiting to board, he felt the terrible comfort in sensing his own impenetrable metal shutters coming down. It was then that he finally tested his own strength. By returning home, he'd stopped those barriers closing. By opening up, he'd been able to break their mechanism. For the first time ever, he'd entrusted the bare facts of his life to someone else and the reward for doing so was to be given love and support that were as generous and gentle as they were indestructible. And it was only tonight, in France, in the last few hours, that the facts and experiences and emotions of Joe's recent past had collided and enmeshed to give him a new protective armature, a new form, one that was invincible enough to withstand temptation – temptation to run away, temptation to close down, or the temptation of Nathalie and any other Nathalies he might know or yet meet.

The ease of secret sex. He'd always assumed it preferable to the rigmarole of conventional relationships. He thought about this now, as he changed position to lie on his side. You could have what you liked, when you pleased. And he acknowledged that it had provided him with a lot of exciting sex over the years. But it wasn't anything like what he'd experienced with Tess. He could have fucked Nathalie tonight – easily. The invitation had been as flattering as ever, and her later consternation and attempt to emasculate him had been titillating. They could easily have had a fast, violent shag with an explosive come. Tess would never know and never be hurt by it. But he'd know – that was the difference now, for Joe –
he'd know
. And the point he wanted to prove was not to Nathalie that he was the best fuck she'd ever have, nor to himself that he could satiate his needs while hurting no one. Instead, it was now an unspoken point he wanted to make to Tess.

He sat up. He had it.

‘It's as if a lack of love made me what I was for the first half of my life. But then love came along and stopped me in my tracks at the age of forty-four and will now shape the last half.’

He walked over to the mirror, edged in thin, fractured veneer.

‘If I get to ninety,’ he laughed.

His mobile woke him. With a start, he saw that it was seven in the morning and the caller was Tess and he was still wearing his clothes from yesterday. He had fallen dead asleep without phoning her the night before.

‘I'm sorry I'm sorry,’ he laughed before she had the chance to say anything, ‘I was completely and utterly whacked yesterday. I didn't even eat. I had a bottle of wine and I fell asleep on this jail-hard single bed wearing yesterday's clothes. I'll buy you a big present, I promise. I'll scrub all the floors and you can flog me. I'll cook for you seven days in a row, lunch and dinner. I'll be your sex slave until Christmas. Sorry, Tess – I know I said I'd call.’

‘Joe? You need to come home. It's your mother.’

When the phone had rung at just before six in the morning at the Resolution, Tess had stayed in bed. She thought, why should I stagger out of bed just because now is a convenient time for Joe to call? The phone rang off and though she listened for a message to be left, it appeared there wasn't one. The phone rang again almost immediately. This time she decided to stomp down and say, oi, mate! Tell him he'd better buy her a great big present, or be her sex slave for the next month or cook all the meals and scrub all the floors until Christmas. On picking up the receiver, she said nothing – she was looking forward to hearing Joe splutter and panic over his apology. She was grinning in anticipation.

‘Hullo?’