The Girl Next Door (34 page)

‘Yeah, yeah! Get to the Mr Wallace part, will you?’

Violet laughed. ‘You said you wanted romance. I’m trying to explain to you that those years – between husbands, if you will – those were when I had a romance with myself, sort of. I honestly wasn’t looking for a man. I think I thought at that point that I’d spend the rest of my life on my own. And I thought that was okay.’

‘Until Mr Wallace made his move…’

Violet laughed. ‘If you’d ever met him, you’d know how hilarious it was to describe him that way. Stead‐man didn’t have “moves”, as you so charmingly call them.’

‘So tell me…’ The baby kicked. It was a very new feeling – only the last week or so.

‘I’m getting there. Mr Johnson retired in, I think, 1965, when I’d been with the firm two or three years. Around the same time, Steadman’s secretary, Mary, went off to have a baby – that was it, in those days. No maternity leave. She was gone, off to the suburbs, never to be seen again. So it made sense for me to transfer to Steadman. I don’t think I was even all that pleased about it – I’d been happy with Mr Johnson – we’d found a great way to work together, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to change. I told myself I’d give it a few months.’

‘And that’s when it started.’

‘Not exactly. It was a really, really slow burn, Stead‐man and me. With Gus I had the palpitations early on, and they petered out. With Steadman they took a while to start, but they lasted much longer… I know you want to hear about thunderbolts and violins and roses, but it really wasn’t like that. Do you know what really happened? The truth? We got to know each other – first at work, then, as time went on, outside of work – and we liked each other. Really got to know each other. We liked each other very much. We were great friends. For the longest time.

‘I showed him the city I loved, and he showed me his. Steadman loved opera and classical music – things I’d never really been exposed to. He took me to Carnegie Hall and other places. And I started to love it, too. He taught me about fine food and good wine. We were different, he and I, and I was excited to see things through his eyes. I think I was just… ready. I wouldn’t have been, after Gus. I needed that time on my own.’

‘What about him? A guy in his forties, right? Was there ever a Mrs Wallace?’

‘Not before me. He’d been shy. And serious. And hadn’t really known where to look.’

‘And then there you were?’

‘I suppose.’

‘So what made things change between you?’

Violet paused. ‘A starry night, a supreme soprano, and a gin martini.’

‘And you said there was no romance in this story.’

‘I never said that.’ Violet’s eyes were sparkling. She went over to a chest of drawers, and pulled out a photograph, looking at herself, then passing it to Eve. Steadman. In a dinner jacket, his hair slicked back. He was tall and slender. He looked a bit matinee idol, in black and white, in the DJ. He had thick‐rimmed glasses on, and a shy smile, and one of those faces that seems to belong to another time.

‘It was November. Crisp and cold and bright. We’d been to see
La Bohème
. I’d never seen it live before, although Steadman had played me the soundtrack, and I’d seen the Zeffirelli film that came out early in the year. This was the same production as the film. It came to the Met in the fall and Steadman got tickets. I couldn’t believe the voices. Especially the soprano – Mimi. Her name was Mirella Freni, and she was… exquisite. I was … moved, I suppose. There was a gin martini, in the bar in the intermission. And there were stars, on the walk home. Brighter than I ever remembered seeing them before. And he kissed me. He just kissed me. Afterwards he said he’d been wanting to do it forever, but he’d never been brave enough, or sure at all that I would be receptive. But something aligned, that night, something just a little bit magical, I suppose. He stopped suddenly, on the sidewalk, outside an antiques store on Madison, and spun around to face me, then he just took hold of the tops of my arms, tightly, and kissed me.’

‘And?’ Eve’s hands were clasped together.

‘And… ?’

‘Were you shocked? You must have been. All that time.’

‘Yes and no. I was, at first, I suppose. But almost immediately – I can’t explain it adequately – it seemed like exactly the right thing.’

‘That’s lovely.’

‘It was, rather.’ Violet stared into the middle distance for a moment, one finger gently stroking Steadman’s cheek on the picture in her hand.

‘And that was it?’

‘Pretty much. Steadman was old‐fashioned. He seemed to set about romancing me properly, after that. Flowers. Candlelit dinners. The odd passionate clinch outside my front door, but nothing more. He wasn’t like that. I’d have happily abandoned convention at that point, but Steadman wanted to wait until we were married.

‘So it seemed a good idea to get on with that, as you can imagine. He went down on one knee, with a Tiffany box.’ Violet stuck out her hand, and Eve took it and looked at the aquamarine and diamond platinum ring as though she hadn’t seen it a hundred times before.

‘It’s beautiful.’

‘Isn’t it? He chose exactly what I’d have chosen for myself. I’d never had an engagement ring before. I hadn’t been engaged, in the traditional sense – it was all so perfunctory and fast and practical with Gus.’

‘Did Steadman know about Gus?’

‘Of course. I couldn’t have kept that kind of thing a secret from him.’

‘And he didn’t mind?’

‘What would that have achieved? We both wanted to move forward. We were excited about a life together – a new life. Looking backwards would have been pointless. So I was a widow, and he was a 45‐year‐old virgin. Who cared? What mattered was that we’d found each other. We were so happy.’

She looked happy, Eve reflected, just talking about him. Her features had softened, and her eyes were sparkling.

‘What kind of wedding did you have?’

‘Small. We got married on a Friday, the following May, down at City Hall. We had two people from the office as witnesses, and lunch, just the two of us, at the St Regis. With champagne. And a night in a suite there, too, but I shall draw a discreet veil over that… except to say, if you’ll permit – that
that
was a wedding night…’ Just for a moment, the young woman she had been passed across her face, flushed and excited. She went back to the drawer. ‘I think I have a photograph of us, here. I wore a lilac suit with a pillbox hat. Here we go.’ She handed Eve a picture of the two of them. ‘It was a wonderful day. We took the train to Niagara Falls for our honeymoon. I had a new valise from Macy’s. I still have it. And a trousseau. Steadman insisted I shop for new clothes. He said I deserved to feel like a bride. He worried that I’d missed out, on all the traditional trimmings – the big white dress, the church – all of that. I told him I didn’t give a damn. I told him that this, all of this, everything about it, was perfect.

‘And I meant it. He was perfect to me. I didn’t know that was possible.’

Eve thought about Ed. Was he perfect to her? She might have thought so once. She loved him, very much. She never doubted that – at least she never had before. But perfection? That seemed impossible.

She wondered why Violet kept the photographs hidden away in a drawer. One day, she’d ask.

Arthur

Arthur Alexander hadn’t enjoyed much in recent years. Not a whole lot in his entire life, truthfully. Benny Hill reruns on television. Shamed politicians, and fallen idols. Anything with double cream, preferably pie. That was probably his downfall – the double cream. But he may just have enjoyed the ironic, dark humour of dying at Halloween. It was too quick, of course. It did feel like they always said it did – like an elephant sitting on your chest. He’d had the ache down his arm for a couple of days, and been breathless walking back from the store, but at his age neither the aches nor the sensation of breathlessness were unusual, and he thought nothing of it. He’d been tired, too, but what was new? He was always tired. It sometimes amazed him how much. But he supposed that actually he was more tired of life than tired by it these days.

He wouldn’t have gone to the doctor, even if he had linked the symptoms. He hated doctors, and now he had no insurance, so doctors pretty much hated him, too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been. And God forbid that they should hook him up to those monitors, and poke and prod at him with their instruments of torture, telling him to stop eating the double cream. He was ready to go. He’d been ready for a long time.

If Arthur could have changed anything about his death, short of hastening it by twenty years, he might have chosen to sign up for trick or treating in the building, when the sign went up in the elevator last week – although he never had, in all the years he’d lived here – and then he might have died with his door open, slumped in his wing‐backed leather armchair, the ultimate trick for the neighbourhood’s children.
That
might have made him smile.

But he hadn’t seen the list. No one came that night to trick or treat. Five days later, the porter told the super that Arthur hadn’t left garbage in the service entrance all week. The doorman, prompted, added that he hadn’t checked his mail either. He wasn’t on holiday – Arthur hadn’t been on holiday for years. In the end, it was Todd and Greg, on their way out to walk Ulysses, who told Mr Gonzalez he really should check on him. They went with him, to make sure he did, leaving Ulysses tied to the awning pole. They knocked for ten minutes, calling his name through the door, then let themselves in with the master set of keys, and found him.

Hardly any of his neighbours had noticed his absence. Just the two men he’d spent years avoiding. To them, to the other residents, he’d been an old curmudgeon. An irritable, grumpy old man, homophobic and rude, cantankerous and unkempt.

They didn’t know anything about him. Eve’s hunch had been right, though she never knew it. It wasn’t their fault. He’d chosen it that way. They didn’t know that he’d once wanted to be a doctor himself; that he’d had to put his studies on hold in 1942 when he was called up. They couldn’t imagine that he’d been engaged, before the war, to a plump girl with deep‐blue eyes called Nancy, a girl who couldn’t or wouldn’t wait for him and married his younger cousin before he came back, and that he hadn’t been able to trust anyone fully since. If they had known that Arthur had been in the 42nd Infantry Division during the war, one of the units that marched into Dachau in April 1945, might they have treated him differently – made excuses for his behaviour, recognized that a man cannot see those things without being profoundly changed forever? Probably not. New York was full of refugees, and survivors. Of that war, and a hundred others. It was possible that descendants of the few Jews that Arthur had liberated during those spring days sixty years ago were living in the buildings that surrounded his home – on his own block, maybe. Arthur had never been to a Veterans’ Day parade, never worn his medals. He wasn’t proud of himself. He was ashamed of himself, and of everyone else.

He hadn’t seen good in the world since that morning, and death, when it came, quick and painful, was more of a relief than anything else.

Emily

Charlotte and Emily had been out for Thai food. Trip had wanted to spend the evening with Emily – he’d been invited to a party in Brooklyn, and he’d wanted to take her with him. She hadn’t met any of his friends yet. They were still in the phase where they were enough for each other – where they didn’t want to share. She wasn’t keen.

She said she’d feel like Barbra Streisand did with Robert Redford’s friends in
The Way We Were
. Out of place and gauche. ‘You’re all blue bloods, I bet.’

‘Absolutely. American Royalty. They’d hate you, you’re right. I’m ashamed of you, in fact. Don’t come.’

‘Are you using reverse psychology on me?’

‘Maybe. Listen, you crazy girl – my friends are not some homogenized group of identikit Duke graduates, you know.’ He paused. ‘Okay. Maybe they are. All the more reason for you to come – stir things up a bit. Besides – I want to show you off. They’ll all fancy the arse off you. Can’t a guy brag?’

‘You can brag all you want. I’ll give you a picture to show them. I’m going out with Charlotte. I haven’t seen her for ages.’

‘Can we at least meet up later?’

‘Won’t you be drunk?’

‘Not if I have a reason not to be…’

‘Okay. I’ll be your sobriety cause. Come see me when you get back. I’m bound to be home before you.’

‘Shall I bring my toothbrush?’

‘Don’t push your luck.’

They still hadn’t had sex. There’d been an extraordinary amount of kissing and touching and almost everything else, but they’d never made love. It was almost killing him. It wasn’t the sex that he wanted most – although he wanted that in the worst way. He wanted to sleep with her. Just sleep. He didn’t quite recognize the person he was when he just lay still with her warm, soft body in his arms, fitting so perfectly against his, her chest rising and falling peacefully, in perfect rhythm with his own quiet breathing. There was a stillness about him in those moments that was new, and wonderful, and addictive like no drug he’d tried.

He told himself it had only been six weeks. He’d never actually been with a girl for that long without having sex, and in fact there had only been a few he’d stayed with for that long. He knew she was into him, too. It was the same damn will and single‐mindedness at work that got her through a triathlon.

What he wouldn’t have admitted to anyone was that he quite liked it. It felt… special. This was a good time. He was up by seven thirty – an hour he’d seldom seen in his old life, every weekday. Showered, dressed. They had breakfast together – usually in her apartment. They rode the subway together. They talked, the whole time. She told him about her childhood in Longview. About the men in her mother’s life. That made sense of her, to some extent. He told her some, but not all, of his family stuff. She made him honest.

He didn’t want to go to the party without her. But if he knew he could see her when he got back, he would go.