by John Eider
‘Kindness. Acceptance. Forgiveness.’
‘Sounds nice.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with the air of one only realising it that moment. ‘I think it is.’
It all made sense now to the listening Sylvie, how a couple, who had been such good friends and had shared the same dreams, had detonated themselves. She could see it now: Finn would have pledged his troth like a knight of old to his queen: and there could have been no middle ground, only acceptance of devotion, or rejection to exile.
And what had been the reason for that rejection? What was there in Finn’s make-up that did not fit with Belinda’s ideal? His kookiness? His idiosyncrasy? His difference? (In short, the very things that Sylvie had always liked about him?)
For it was undeniable that Jack was a more conventional sort, at least in his broad-shouldered appearance and easy manner in the pub. (There was still the matter of this illness though. What had Belinda said: depression? An illness Sylvie knew little of, except for how badly it affected people. There was a colleague she remembered, who was off work for months. If only she knew more about this – she would have to try and ask.)
How awful for the boy Finn though, she considered, to have got so close to his image of perfection and then been rejected by it. He must have doubted he would ever come so close again. Well, Sylvie was determined now to show him that something like happiness was possible.
Lost in thought, Sylvie had missed out on what the pair said next. She was not by nature an eavesdropper. Yet she was trapped down the far end of the room, with no way to leave without disturbing their one chance to talk. Also, the things Sylvie was learning seemed vital to know, and given Finn’s secrecy it might be years before she found them out herself. But Sylvie didn’t like it or want it. She determined to lose herself in the designs on the drawing boards.
Chapter 29 – The Future yet Unbuilt
Yet even as Sylvie re-focused on the pictures, she was offered a way out. Bel was saying,
‘…And talking of Sylvie, where is she? Oh look at me, the worst hostess in the world. Sylvie? Sylvie?’
‘I’m over here,’ answered the unhappy eavesdropper.
‘I thought we’d lost you!’ Bel came to stand next to Sylvie at the window. Together they looked along the street below and to the square of rustling trees beyond it. Behind the trees were shadowed buildings with postage stamp lights.
‘I often come up here at night to think,’ recalled Bel. ‘I have the run of the place, you see. And in this job you keep such odd hours.’
‘Have we confused things coming here?’
‘You heard our raised voices?’
‘Only echoes,’ lied Sylvie.
‘No, you haven’t confused anything. In fact it’s nice to get it said. I’ve missed him.’
‘I’ve been looking at the pictures,’ said Sylvie, turning to the nearest drafting board. ‘Look at this cross-section of a building, it’s fantastic.’
‘It is,’ concurred Bel.
‘I used to draw a bit myself,’ confessed Sylvie.
‘You should get back into it.’
‘I was no good at it. Not like these guys.’
Yet Belinda was not the type to let an argument like that get in her way. She said to Sylvie,
‘But look at all the help they have – rulers, set squares, French curves. They’re probably no good either left alone with a piece of paper.’
Sylvie nodded, glad of the encouragement – the other woman seemed so powerful to her now, after hearing how she’d spoken to Finn. Such a presence, hardly a woman at all, as Sylvie understood herself. She wondered what kind of man could bear her. Would he either be henpecked, or exhausted by the effort of always having to stand up to her? Jack seemed quite relaxed though – perhaps he just ignored Bel when she reached a certain pitch?
‘Come on, let’s get a drink.’
Leading on to a door in the wall of the office, Bel opened it to reveal a coffee-making area. Leaning down to a small fridge, she opened it to take out three tiny bottles of lager. On a shelf beside the fridge Sylvie saw a bottle of champagne.
‘For closing business meetings,’ explained Bel. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll replace these tomorrow. They won’t miss them in the meantime.’
Bel opened the first bottle and passed it to Sylvie, but she shook her head,
‘I won’t, thank you. I might get back. It’s been a long day.’
‘And no sign of it getting any shorter.’
‘I’m okay to go out by myself?’
‘Yes, just make sure the doors lock behind you.’
‘Then, thank you for showing us around today.’
‘No, please you’re very welcome.’
The pair smiled, before Belinda asked,
‘What will you pair do?’
‘I don’t know. Find other jobs, I hope.’
‘And will that make him happy?’
‘I don’t think he knows what would make him happy.’
Bel looked back in Finn’s direction,
‘You’re sure you won’t come over?’
But Sylvie shook her head,
‘You need to talk. Go back to him. He needs you.’
‘Then it’s been lovely to meet you.’
‘And you too.’
Bel smiled, and left with their bottles.
Meanwhile, Sylvie skipped down the unlit staircase, and whispered to herself,
‘You still love her.’ It made a lot of sense though. Consumed by the ghost of the one who had rejected him years before. Sylvie shook her head, ‘Finn, you poor devil.’
Chapter 30 – The Old Team
Belinda came back to Finn with the bottles,
‘Sylvie was looking at the pictures on the drawing boards.’
‘Yes, she likes art.’
‘She’s a bright one.’
‘She doesn’t miss much,’ agreed Finn.
‘And you don’t want to miss her.’
‘It’s not like that,’ he said.
‘Then maybe you need to make it?’
Finn didn’t answer, and Belinda changed the topic,
‘It was Jack who found out you were here. Paul rang earlier.’
‘Yes, he told us. Was Jack at the house?’
‘As it happened, in between drop-offs. It gave me time to prepare myself. Emotionally, I mean.’
‘I know.’
‘Jack remembered how you’d felt about me. I think he’d heard a lot of it from you.’
‘He had.’
‘Jack and I met properly when he was ill. He got in touch with me to get in touch with you; but we found each other. I could help him, and later he helped me.’
‘He’s big-hearted.’
‘Yes.’
‘And a flirt.’
‘You underestimate his charm,’ she said, as one who clearly didn’t.
‘Well, I’m glad you had somebody.’
‘There were a few actually – does that shock you?’
‘I’m not a puritan.’
‘And I’m not a nun.’
‘No.’
‘So what about you?’ she asked.
‘What?’
‘Have you been getting much?’
‘No.’
‘No, I didn’t think you would. Or is it insensitive me asking with Sylvie in town?’
Finn let the question hang.
Sat with their drinks now, Bel was saying,
‘And I did move out, you know. I was married, for three years. It’s a good job my Mum kept my room. I wasn’t in a position to look after myself at that time.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘No, there’s a lot you don’t.’
‘Who was he?’
‘A design student. He might even be doing something like this now.’ She gestured with her arm across the rows of drawing boards, large computer screens, and artists’ models. ‘I really thought it would work – that I’d support him while he studied, then he’d keep me once famous; which I was
certain he would be.’
‘Only he never was?’
‘I never found out – he didn’t hang around long enough. I don’t know why he married me, actually. The world and his wife – especially his wife – were full of advice afterwards. “Oh, you should have found someone more stable, in a more-secure job.” I think that put me off trying again more than the divorce did.’
‘So, what’s Jack?’
‘Jack makes me laugh. He’s warm, funny.’
‘I can imagine.’
‘So what’s Sylvie to you?’
‘She’s nothing…’
…were the words that hung in Finn’s ears, as if they had been spoken by another person. He heard them carry across the empty office, in his shock stumbling mid-sentence. But time hadn’t stopped, Finn was continuing, fumbling his words; and soon he knew he’d got it wrong…
‘…She’s not… not like that, I mean. She’s a friend.’
‘A good one?’
‘The best.’
‘She seems it,’ struck Belinda.
‘She is.’
‘Better than you deserve.’
‘In that one respect, I have a habit of punching above my weight.’
‘God, you put things in the strangest way.’
‘It’s just how my mind works.’
‘All these little quirks of yours I’d forgotten,’ said Belinda in playful tone. ‘Well, I suppose I was your friend once, so I should take that as a compliment.’
‘You still are.’
Yet inside Finn was reeling. For he had realised something: that Sylvie was anything but nothing.
Chapter 31 – Sylvie Stood Outside
Even as she jogged down the staircase, Sylvie began to relax. The new-found freedom nearly had her scurrying out onto the pavement and straight back to the hotel. Released from her awkward situation, she no longer had to fear the ultimate reward of an eavesdropper: that of hearing herself spoken of in terms she wouldn’t value.
Sylvie came out through reception and pushed the security door shut – and welcomed the cool of evening. There she stood awhile, unnoticed by the odd late-night shopper or passing bus.
Upstairs, she had watched the tops of those buses go past. On the leather sofas still, the pair would be rumbling on in their reminiscences. Yet, in the quiet street, Sylvie had a chance to question her own feelings:
Had this odd visit, and the shake-up it had caused, and Finn’s… well, bravery in not going into the hated conference room… Had it had her imagining she had feelings for him?
There were certainly maternal feelings, the clear need he had for someone to look out for him… And then it clicked. The reason Sylvie had been so glad to leave the room, was that she didn’t want to hear that she wasn’t loved.
Anything but that.
How ridiculous. The moment of realising this felt like being shot. For if she didn’t love him, then why did she fear his words so badly?
Sylvie breathed. Maybe it was nothing very much worse than being brought around to her senses? Though Finn had been a great friend, she had never fancied him. He had never filled her image of a man; at least the image of a man she wanted in that way. Yet he had been brave, quite extraordinarily so in fact. The only one of perhaps a hundred delegates to have both the humanity to find the conference room repellent, and the courage – or perhaps just mortal fear – not to be able to go in. That was a moment she would always treasure, and it made her breathing quicken just to think of it.
Sylvie’s thoughts turned to their hosts. Did Jack love Bel, or she him? Sylvie wasn’t sure, yet she envied them, envied any pair she saw together. There seemed only one true love among the four of them, and that was what Finn had once held – and had instantly rekindled – for Bel. Who was it who had said that everyone has the right to feel love once in a lifetime, but not the right to not get hurt by it?
Pity, kindness, friendship – Sylvie felt all these things for Finn. But now, in his single act of saying no, he had challenged her assumptions of what her life could be. He had opened up the possibility of her days being more than just holding onto the best role she could hope for in the office she found herself bound to. Again, her breathing quickened – she was a sensual woman, and she had the right to feel this.
But it only brought her back to her central question. She had known her share of men, yet sensed the next would be her ‘keeper’. If it was love she felt now, then it was in a different way to with any other man she’d known.
He had no confidence, she realised. That was the issue. A man without confidence was like an engine without steam, a balloon without hot air – he simply didn’t work. And it was the quality of him owning the room he was in, and of him sweeping her along with him, that was what Sylvie loved about a man. As she thought this she imagined such a figure, imagined him holding her. She held the mental image, let it pause, rewind and replay in her mind.
She had never before been with a man without brio. Indeed, it was her first requirement, for it was – or had been – her iron rule to never make the first move. If a man had not the nerve to come over and approach her, even after offering him the signs, then the encounter simply wouldn’t ever happen.
Yet Finn had no confidence, was lost in the world. How could she feel her usual passion for a man she was virtually nursing, as she had been that day? Sylvie wasn’t sure if she was asking herself the question or telling herself the answer.
There was something there, and it would take her time to figure it out. But it was all too uncertain and confusing, and a part of her only wanted to nip it in the bud the first chance she had. At least for the time being, until she understood it better.
Chapter 32 – First and Fondest Loves
Back in the break-out area, with a beer so cold that he could hardly drink it, Finn was remembering his dreams,
‘Record shops are the last bastion of civilisation.’
‘The Net would have done for you by now,’ speculated Bel.
‘Not if you’d done it properly. Not if you’d made the shop itself a place to want to visit, to be seen in.’
‘We used to say that fashion shops and record shops and book shops were the last acceptable faces of capitalism,’ she remembered. ‘The only businesses the outsider and the outcast could support.’
‘We were right,’ he said.
Bel tried to bring those thoughts up to date,
‘But for that reason the world is stuffed with them, and most are scratching around for corn, in low-rent sectors and making one sale a day. To think of that as your future is to be lost inside your record collection.’
‘It’s following a dream,’ he answered, suddenly finding himself defending the point.
‘It’s staving off extinction,’ she countered. ‘It’s living in the past. It’s not becoming an adult.’
He gasped. She continued,
‘We can’t live in dreams, Finn. That’s the danger that I’m holding you back from.’ She caught herself then, as she’d a habit of doing, for she had gone far too far,
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t want to shout. Forgive me, Finn. Don’t let us part on bad terms again for another who-knows-how-many years.’
‘We won’t, we won’t,’ he assured her. ‘But these were your dreams too, Bel, and it hurts to hear you slate them.’
‘But that’s because they didn’t come true. I tried them, Finn. I ran a fashion outlet, and it went to the wall.’
‘I hadn’t known.’
‘What do you think I was doing here all these years? You left me to do it on my own, Finn, and I failed. You think Superclean Champions was ever my first choice?’
‘So much has happened, and I’ve missed it.’
‘You don’t know the half of it, Mister,’ she muttered, but left her words unclarified. ‘I love book shops and record shops and all the other things you loved. You know I do.’
And Finn knew she did. Here was his friend again, and how he’d missed her. He leant across and hugged her,
‘Do you remember our bands?’
She nodded. ‘Do you still listen to them?’
‘Off and on, I’ve still got my old CDs.’
‘And the magazines we used to read!’ It all came back to her then. ‘I even had my favourite writers; they were like heroes and heroines to me.’
‘I wonder where they are now?’ he asked.
‘Where do you think they are?’ began Belinda. ‘They grew up, had kids, stopped being perpetual adolescents. They started writing for proper newspapers, writing about what proper people are concerned about. Important joyless stuff like tax rates and house prices and mortgages – sorry to mention that subject – and what the judges on TV talent contests are wearing that week. They “put away childish things”, those first and fondest loves. They left you and me behind, kid. And don’t you feel the fool for it?’
‘And how wonderful for them,’ he took up her theme, ‘for those first loves to be so easily put-asideable. Don’t you wonder sometimes, Bel, if you’re the only sucker left with a soul? The only one who can’t make the cynical decisions? And then wonder just how much your life has been put back for this “lack”?’
‘God, Finn, look at us talking like we haven’t been apart for five minutes.’
‘You’re not embarrassed of being too friendly then?’ he asked. ‘Worried I’ll fall for you all over again? That was what killed us the first time.’
‘Yes it was, wasn’t it? I’d quite forgotten. What must it have been like for you all those years with that unforgetting memory of yours? Every disappointment and mistake kept in Technicolor?’
‘So you’re not embarrassed?’ he asked again.
‘No, that’s not going to happen again now, is it. I’m not the apple of anybody’s eye these days.’
‘Just Jack’s.’
‘He doesn’t fancy me, not properly. You fancied me because I was cute, not for anything else.’
‘I fancied you because you were cute and everything else.’
She tried to flinch away her smile, replying,
‘You say the nicest things – what a shame your Casanova gene was wasted on the rest of you. You weren’t ever built right, were you?’
‘No.’
‘It must be difficult.’
‘Sometimes.’
‘And no, I’m not embarrassed,’ she said. ‘For it will never happen, for a hundred different reasons.’ Bel kissed him on the forehead, then hesitated,