Min came in from the kitchen, spectacles perched on her head, apron tied about her waist and a large glass of wine in one hand. She told Ray off for not putting any music on and then did the rounds of her guests offering olives and pistachios, making proper introductions that skilfully drew out the things we had in common, without seeming forced or formal.
‘I was just telling Luca and Melissa here,’ Cath told me, ‘some jakey’s taken up residence in the old barn across the way.’
‘Jakey?’ I repeated dumbly.
‘A tramp, a vagrant… sorry,’ she put on a genteel English accent, ‘a homeless person.’
‘Oh dear!’ I said, then realising that my dismay might be misinterpreted, ‘that is… it can’t be very easy, can it? Living rough… out here?’
‘Must everyone live the conventional life then,’ Luca challenged me, with a mischievous glint in his eye. ‘In his little house with his little car and his little computer?’
‘Or hers,’ Cath put in, pointedly.
‘No, of course not,’ I said with a combative smile, ‘but I wonder if you’d be so “live and let live” if you had someone sleeping rough at the bottom of your garden.’
‘I like to think I’d be pretty relax,’ said Luca. ‘Society is never going to fit every square peg into a round hole. Maybe this person, he’s happier than any of us?’
‘Och, sentimental nonsense,’ Cath insisted. ‘Do you know the stats for premature death among the homeless? Because I’m from Glasgow…’
‘… But this guy’s not shooting up heroin in a doorway, is he? He’s living close to nature. He lights a fire, he shoots a rabbit, he gets the aglio trigono from the woods, he has a feast. Maybe it’s us who are the fools with our mortgage and our online shopping from Waitrose…’
‘I wish…’ muttered Cath.
‘What’s ahlee-oh treegono?’ I asked, seizing a chance to move the conversation on to a less contentious footing. Luca warmed to his theme: wild garlic, apparently, and abundant in the woods round about, as were edible mushrooms. He’d take me foraging, he promised. ‘Early one morning, when the season come around.’
‘What’s this,’ Nick wandered over, ‘foraging with my missus? Not sure I like the sound of that.’
‘Oh no, it’s not what you think,’ Luca laughed nervously. ‘Foraging mean taking food from nature… living off the land.’
‘I know what foraging means, pal,’ Nick said, giving Luca’s shoulder a playful punch, ‘I’m not an idiot.’
There was a slightly awkward pause before Ray topped up our wine. Then we all clinked glasses and the conversation turned to more innocuous chitchat about the pleasures of the country versus those of the town, the superiority of Italian cuisine to all others and the unaccountable preference of the English for warm beer.
Min called us through to the kitchen for the first course, prompting exclamations of delight at the charm of their shabby-chic décor – the retro lighting, bentwood chairs and the weathered metal advertising signs for Fry’s Chocolate and Shell Gasoline.
An hour into the evening and we could have passed for a group of old friends. The wine helped, of course, and the informality of the set-up – the scrubbed pine table, arrayed with Min’s home-made Middle Eastern meze, which soon had us leaning across one another to hand around bread, scoop dips and snatch fat olives from the bowl with barely a by-your-leave. I was, I realized to my surprise, having a good time. Cath was on excellent form, Ethan appeared to have bonded with Ray, and Luca it turned out, shared my love of early twentieth-century British pottery and knew a great deal about it.
It must have been the elderflower champagne, because I’d only had one glass of red with dinner, when Melissa asked me about my work and before I knew it I’d gone into a little too much detail.
‘… An installation, I think you’d have to call it,’ I heard myself say. ‘The theme? Gosh, well, I don’t know. Barrenness, I suppose.’
‘Barrenness?’ she wrinkled her nose prettily.
‘Yes,’ I said, a flush rising up from my neck, ‘the end of reproduction.’
I sensed Nick bending a worried ear in my direction from across the table.
‘And if that sounds wanky, I don’t care!’ I reached for my glass and took a defiant swig. ‘That’s what’s on my mind. I say on my mind, but I barely feel I’ve got a mind sometimes and that’s part of it too. I don’t know where you are with all this, Melissa… but if I’m honest, I’m finding it all pretty bloody awful – no pun intended.’
‘Oh, I can’t wait to shut up shop,’ she said, ‘but I’m afraid it’s a few years off for me. Mind you, I’ve never wanted kids, so it’s all felt like a messy waste of time. Maybe I’d feel differently if I’d put my body to good use!’
She laughed disingenuously and I glanced across at Nick, who was looking at her as if he thought she had put it to exactly the right kind of use. I wondered if he would look at me like that if I got myself up in a leather sheath and too much lipstick and decided he would probably just laugh.
‘Anyway, I shouldn’t jinx it by talking about it,’ I said. ‘I’ve barely thrown a pot yet, but seeing as my generous husband has laid out a small fortune on a fabulous new studio for me,’ I reached across the table and caressed his fingertips, ‘I feel I should make the most of it.’
Nick allowed his hand to lie inert beneath mine for a moment and then extricated it to reach for a hunk of bread. I wasn’t sure quite what I’d done wrong, whether it was the over-sharing of my ideas, their crassly feminist nature, or perhaps even the fact that I had undercut them by turning into a simpering wifey at the end of my awkward little speech. Maybe he just wanted to keep his options open vis-à-vis the voluptuous Melissa. Maybe he just wanted to keep me guessing.
‘Well, it sounds like a wonderful concept,’ said Luca, plunging gallantly into the awkward silence, ‘and especially for being inspired by the locality here, it would be amazing if you would consider perhaps for us to take a look?’
I shrugged awkwardly.
‘There isn’t much to look at yet.’
‘Ah no of course, but at your set-up at least. Your work space,’ Luca beamed. ‘We have a little art trail that we organize each year.’ His eyes were bulging with enthusiasm now, his curls bouncing around his spectacles like bed springs. ‘We could put you on the map in your new locality, so to say…’
‘Speak, darling, so to speak,’ Melissa corrected him wearily, ‘and Karen hardly needs us to put her on the map. She’s very well established already. We’re fans,’ she added, turning to me with a sycophantic smile.
‘Of mine?’ I said doubtfully.
‘Oh sure,’ Luca said. ‘Your “She” series kicked ass, man. We wanted to buy a piece for the gallery, but your dealer said there was nothing available.’
He shrugged and looked at me, as if expecting an explanation.
My hand, clutching the serviette in my lap, seemed to have gone into some kind of spasm. My mouth opened and closed like a goldfish’s. The conversation at the other end of the table tailed off.
‘Ah well, yes, I had a…er… there was a bit of an…’
‘Some of the pots got damaged,’ Nick interrupted suavely, ‘and no one wanted to put their hand up. Legal nightmare…’
Ants swarmed in my head. I could feel the heat of the spotlights, see the grey gleam of the gallery’s concrete floor, hear my own voice howling…
I’d been pacing up and down ever since I’d arrived, minutely adjusting my pots on their plinths to show them to their best advantage. They’d been so long in the making; I didn’t want any detail to be missed. I knew what people were like once they got a glass of champagne in their hands; friends, critics – even collectors – would just stand there gassing away, more interested in the Cork Street gossip than in engaging with the work.
‘You OK on your own for twenty minutes if I pop out and buy a pair of tights?’ Claudia Fussell had said at six o’clock.
‘No problem,’ I told her,
‘Nick’s due any time.’
‘Oh and before I forget…’ she opened a drawer, took out a couple of envelopes and handed them to me, ‘… fan mail I assume…’
The first envelope contained a congratulations card from my old tutor at art college. I hadn’t seen him for eighteen years. He’d made a massive impression on me, but I didn’t think he’d even known my name. I got a lump in my throat reading it.
The second envelope must have been hand-delivered. There was no address or stamp, just my name scrawled in an unfamiliar female script.
I was still staring at it in a daze when Nick breezed in a few minutes later.
‘Well hello, Mizz Karen Mulvaney, how’s the interface between Feminism and Fucking coming along?’
I looked up and watched the facetious smile die on my husband’s lips. His eyes moved quickly from the letter in my hands, to the discarded envelope on the floor, and back to my face.
‘Something wrong?’ he said, all bogus innocence.
‘You lied!’ I hissed.
‘Karen?’ he said, warily.
‘That one-night stand? The one you regretted with every fibre of your being?’
My voice was bitter and sarcastic but with a catch of tears. I thrust the letter under his nose, too close for him to read, before dashing it to the floor at his feet.
‘Seems like she didn’t get the memo, Nick. She seems to think it was a four-year affair.’
‘Karen, Karen, listen…’ Nick’s voice was low and urgent, ‘whatever she’s told you, it’s not true; she’s unhinged.’
He took a step towards me and reached for my hands. I knew if I let him touch me I was lost, so I turned and grabbed one of my pots to ward him off.
‘Karen, love, please don’t…’ Nick’s voice was quiet, pleading. ‘This is crazy. There’s no need.’
He made a sudden movement and I thrust the pot out at arm’s length, like a madwoman dangling her child over a cliff, eyes glistening, throat clotted with tears, weight shifting slightly from foot to foot.
‘No need?’ I nodded towards the letter on the floor, ‘What about that? Four years! Four fucking years!’
The pot was heavy in my hands, the glaze slippery…
‘It’s not what you think. You’re making way too much of it. Don’t do this, Karen, don’t punish yourself. Oh, sweet Jesus!’
I let it drop and it smashed on the floor, shards flying everywhere.
I didn’t even glance at the wreckage, just kept my eyes locked on his, while my hand groped for the next pot.
‘You’re waiting for Ethan to go to uni,’ I said, nodding towards the letter, ‘that’s what she says. You’re going to do right by your son, and then you’re leaving your sham of a marriage and going to her.’
‘Not true! Not true! Kaz, she’s a fantasist. She’d say anything. Hell hath no fury, you know that…’
I toppled the next one. He had to duck out of the way to avoid getting hit. He was cowering now, clutching his head. It was good to feel powerful…
I wasn’t even listening now. He was begging, tears in his eyes, dodging from plinth to plinth, trying to intercept me, but I was on an adrenaline high; living for the smash, living in the moment of destruction, wrecking everything, everything, everything, because none of it mattered any more.
I heard the tinkle of water being poured from a jug.
‘Here you go, lovey. You’re white as a sheet,’ Cath said pushing the glass towards me. ‘That elderflower champagne – not as innocent as it looks!’
I felt drained and disorientated. I looked at the concerned faces trained on mine and wondered how long had I zoned out for this time? A few seconds? A minute? I could hear a rasping, vibrating sound and looking down, saw that it was my own hand trembling uncontrollably in my lap. I stilled it with my other hand and when I felt able to do so, picked up the tumbler and took a sip of water. Gradually the chat resumed, haltingly at first and then more naturally, the conversation turning to local walks, the plethora of stately homes in the vicinity, which ones were open to the public and when.
I nodded along and smiled, all the while avoiding Nick’s eye. I knew if I caught it, I would read only disapproval there. It was another few minutes before it occurred to me to glance towards the far end of the table where, the last time I’d looked, Ethan had been deep in conversation with Ray. Both chairs were vacant now. I swivelled my head towards the living room, expecting to see the two of them poring over the jukebox together or leafing through a pile of old biker magazines, but when I heard the ear-splitting stutter of a motorbike engine coming from the other side of the kitchen window I leaped up in dismay, knocking a glass of rioja straight into Melissa’s leather-clad lap.
11
‘Well, that was embarrassing,’ said Nick, as we got into bed. It was the first time he had spoken to me, other than in monosyllables, since we had left Min and Ray’s.
‘I’m sorry but Ray was out of order,’ I hissed, even though there was no one else in the house to hear me. ‘I don’t care if he’s tee-total. I don’t care if he biked from Land’s End to John O’Groats when he was Ethan’s age; you don’t let a teenager drive a death machine like that and then leave them in a strange pub and piss off home.’
‘Ethan rode pillion. It was the local pub and it was half past fucking nine, for God’s sake. I don’t think you realize how fucked-up your attitude looks to normal people.’
‘Well, it’s not half past nine now, is it? It’s way past closing time, so where’s my son?’
I snatched up my phone and checked again, but Ethan had not responded to my texts.
‘It’s probably a lock-in. In which case, good luck to him. He’s more in with the locals than we are after months of trying. I wonder why.’
‘Sorry…? Are you blaming me? You think I’m not making an effort? Because I’m totally making an effort. I’ve even said we’d go to the Gaineses’ Auction of Promises, which I can’t say I’m looking forward to. It’s not like they’re going to be our new best mates, is it?’
‘I don’t know, but Min and Ray might have been if you hadn’t just thrown their hospitality back in their faces. Honestly, Karen, you’re a fucking genius at pressing self-destruct, aren’t you? Some lovely, good-hearted people invite you round, introduce you to their really classy, really interesting friends, who could be very useful to your career…’
‘My career…’ I scoffed.
‘To your career,’ he repeated, ‘and what do you do? You flirt with Melissa’s husband…’
‘I flirt…? I flirt…?’
‘You blabber on about reproduction…’
‘They asked about my work!’
‘Knock back so much of Cath’s hooch you turn into a zombie…’
‘It wasn’t the alcohol, Nick, I barely had a glass. I was having a…’
‘Don’t say panic attack,’ he clenched his jaw fiercely. ‘They are not panic attacks, Karen. People who’ve been in war zones have panic attacks. They are a documented side-effect of medication which, by the way, you ought to be off by now.’
I took a breath and closed my eyes.
‘I didn’t know where to put myself,’ he muttered bitterly. ‘Have you any idea how much leather costs to clean?’
‘Oh, that fucking dress!’
But Nick had turned his back on me and his body, shrouded in duvet, looked hostile and unassailable as a long-barrow guarding its secrets.
I moved a bit nearer, but didn’t yet dare reach out. He was right, I had lost the plot; ranted embarrassingly; made fools of us both.
‘I’m sorry,’ I murmured into the darkness, touching his back, tentatively. He didn’t even flinch, just lay inert – which was somehow more troubling still, so I snuggled up under the bedclothes and spooned him.
‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.’
Kiss, kiss, kiss.
His skin was warm, and smelled of sweat and spice. He was right about the self-destruct button. I did have a knack for pressing it
. I was going to press it now. It was already too late to go back. To give him his due, he resisted for a while, and quite right too. I deserved to abase myself, after the way I had behaved. I deserved to be humiliated after the way I had humiliated him. And I felt better afterwards. I had let him do… what he needed to do, and I, well, enjoyed it is perhaps not the right term, but I had got where I needed to go. And the shame and compunction he seemed to feel afterwards, whilst unnecessary as far as I was concerned, at least seemed to restore our equilibrium. At any rate, the next morning he seemed in fine fettle; I could hear him in the bathroom, humming under his breath as his piss cascaded into the toilet, then clattering about in the kitchen before bringing this time, not just the usual tray of tea, but toast and jam and the best news I could have had, which I was nevertheless careful to receive with an air of casual indifference.
‘Ethan’s home, you’ll be pleased to hear.’
‘Yeah?’
‘Either that or a fucking yeti’s trodden muck through the house and left its trainers on the stairs…’
His tone was amused and indulgent.
‘What a bum,’ I said.
‘Do you think I should go round and apologise?’ I settled back down against the pillows and took a sip of tea.
‘To Ray and Min? Nah. You’d be making too much of it. It’d only be awkward.’
‘Did I come across really badly?’
‘Look, Karen, they’re not stupid. I think by now most people have caught on that you’re not…’
‘… The full shilling,’ I said, tilting my head and dropping my mouth open in a mad Quasimodo stare.
‘… That you’re in recovery,’ said Nick, reproachfully. ‘Except maybe the Gaineses. But they’re upper class so…’
I nudged him.
‘Naughty.’
‘So are you going to crack on with your pots today?’ he said, taking a bite of toast and showering the duvet with crumbs.
‘Crack on,’ I winced, ‘is that a sick joke?’
‘Oh. No, no it’s not.’
‘I suppose I could, couldn’t I? Only, I did say I’d get Ethan some jeans… No, bugger it, I’m going to work.’
The Move Page 9