by Zoe Heller
“He’s going off me!” she wailed one evening, as we were leaving school together. “He’s retreating, I can feel it. And the more he does, the more whiny I become.” The affair had begun to create in her a heady, slightly maudlin state of introspection, she told me. She was filled with a sense of the momentousness of things—a sense of attunement to the grand, melancholy truths about life. Being in love had never produced these solemn sensations in her before. Her courtship with Richard had been a happy, carefree business. The nearest she had ever come to her present state of mind, she said, had been during the third trimesters of her pregnancies, when, as now, she had found herself moved to tears by the most inconsequential things.
She had started to write Connolly long, lyrical letters, she said—letters filled with gloomy analyses of her feelings and passionate statements of her commitment to him. It was too risky to send them, so she handed them to him at the end of their assignations. (Sometimes, when they next met, he would ask her to explain what certain words meant.) For the first time in her life, she was experiencing sexual jealousy. At their last encounter, Connolly had mentioned that he was going to a party that weekend, and she had been agonised. Connolly had rarely spoken of his social activities before; he had always strenuously resisted her proddings on the subject. Did he mean to make her jealous now? Sheba had tried to remain cool, but she had kept picturing him at the party, drinking his rum and Coke from a plastic cup, dancing with peachy-skinned girls in slutty dresses.
“Will you get off with someone?” she had asked. It was a stupid question, but she couldn’t help herself.
Connolly had smiled. “Dunno,” he’d said. “I might.”
She was being ridiculous, she knew that. She couldn’t possibly expect him to be faithful to her. And yet, the thought of his touching someone else—of someone else touching him—filled her with despair.
Things were also going badly between her and Richard. They had begun to argue over trivial matters, she said. This was galling because she and Richard had always prided themselves on the tranquility of their domestic relations. Sheba’s parents had been terrible fighters. She and Eddie had spent a disproportionate part of their childhoods, banished to the garden in order that their parents might shriek at one another with abandon: “Sometimes they’d forget about us, and we’d be stuck outside for hours,” she told me. “When we were finally summoned back in, my father would have left the house and my mother would be slamming about the kitchen, making not so veiled allusions to the misery of her married life. Awful. I swore I would never have that kind of a marriage. Richard and I have always been so good at talking things out.”
Sheba’s instinct was to attribute her marital difficulties to Polly’s presence in the house. “She’s intolerable, intolerable!” she would say, angrily. “She’s driving the family mad!” But, as the weeks went by, she became more inclined to admit that her affair with Connolly was the true source of the trouble. “The fact is,” she told me one night, “I feel contempt for Richard. For his not knowing. I can’t believe he’s so blind! How can he love me and not see it? When I come home from being with Steven, I look at him snoring away, and I want to bang a saucepan over his head. I want to shout, ‘Guess what, you complacent old fart? I’ve been out on the heath, getting fucked by a sixteen-year-old! What do you think of that?’”
I was unhappy in December as well. I was troubled by Sheba’s situation, of course. But my main concern was for Portia’s failing health. One Friday night in mid-November I had arrived home from school to find a puddle of pale pink vomit on my bed. After a series of tests, the vet had diagnosed cancer of the colon; she was now undergoing a rigorous course of radiation therapy. The vet spoke confidently about the prospects of a complete recovery, and I badly wanted to believe in his optimism, but the illness, or the treatment, or both, was sucking the life out of Portia with alarming speed. The proud, ironic creature with whom I had shared my life for twelve years was transforming before my eyes into a cringing, humourless moggy. Every day, she grew more desiccated.
I daresay it will seem inappropriate to some people for me to assume a parity between my troubles and Sheba’s. They will be hard-pressed to believe that an ailing pet could cause a person as much heartache as a wayward lover. Sheba certainly didn’t understand this. In fact, it was her failure to respect my grief—to respond with anything like the proper sympathy—that lay at the root of our brief but catastrophic rift.
On Saturday of the second week of December, I picked Portia up from a radiotherapy session at the vet’s. She was always somewhat enervated after these treatments, but on this occasion she seemed particularly depleted. I was so distressed by her condition that I drove straight to the Harts’ house. I had never before gone to Sheba’s home unannounced, but I judged that the circumstances were sufficiently extraordinary to warrant a lapse in etiquette. The house was dark when I arrived. I took the cat’s travel cage out of the car and went up the steps to ring the bell anyway. Portia was sleeping now. I stood on the front step, hoping against hope that Sheba would be in. After a moment or two, I was turning to walk away when I heard running steps, and then Sheba opened the door. She had been working down in the studio, she explained. Richard and the children were out. She did not acknowledge Portia’s presence.
“Actually,” she said, as we walked down to the basement, “I’m not really working. I’m waiting for a call from Steven. We’re meant to be meeting up this afternoon.”
I placed the travel cage carefully on the floor and sat down on one of Sheba’s folding chairs. Sheba laughed nervously. “He was supposed to phone an hour ago, but I haven’t heard a peep yet. Wretched boy.”
I nodded.
“I expect he’s having trouble getting away from his family,” she went on. “He’s normally pretty punctual. His mother sometimes makes him go shopping with her. To carry the bags …”
“Portia’s in a terrible way,” I said, gesturing at the basket.
Sheba stared. “Oh dear. Poor Portia. Have you just come from the vet?”
“Yes. She’s suffering so much, Sheba. I can’t bear it …” I began to cry.
“Poor Barbara,” Sheba said. “How awful.” She came over and crouched down in front of me. “It’ll be okay,” she said, patting my knee.
After a bit, she got up and pulled up a chair to sit next to me. “Please don’t cry. The vet will make her better.” The effort at consolation was so cursory—so silly—that I was briefly enraged. I took a tissue from my sleeve and dabbed slowly at my eyes.
Sheba’s long arms were lying slackly in her lap. Her skin was so pale that you could see all the veins beneath the surface: long, greenish strands, like seaweed glimpsed through water.
“Did you and your friends stroke each other’s arms when you were at school?” I asked suddenly.
She laughed. “What? No.”
“Oh, we did,” I said. “We used to stroke the insides of each other’s forearms during study hall. One girl would do one girl’s forearm while another girl did her forearm. We’d form great long chains of arm stroking. It’s one of the loveliest sensations.”
Sheba laughed disbelievingly. “For sex-starved thirteen-year-old girls perhaps,” she said.
“Oh no, it’s nothing sexual,” I said. “Look, let me show you.”
I took her right forearm and ran the tips of my fingers up and down from elbow to wrist. It was a bold thing to do. I had never touched Sheba so intimately before.
She giggled, at first. “It’s just tickling!” she said.
“No, no,” I said. “Shut your eyes. Feel it.”
She shut her eyes, and I continued running my fingers lightly across her spindly arm. After a second or two, her mouth fell open. Then she pulled her arm away.
“Just relax,” I told her, pulling her arm back.
“Don’t!” she said sharply. “It creeps me out.” She rolled down her sleeve.
The phone rang, and Sheba leaped up to get it. I could tell it was Conno
lly on the other end by the way she began to whisper and giggle. She carried the telephone into the basement toilet and shut the door.
I sat, angrily swinging my legs, waiting for her to return.
When she came out, she was smiling. “Gosh, I hate to do this, Barbara,” she said, “but I’m going to have to go. That was him.”
I watched her as she began hurriedly to gather up her things. “No,” I said.
Sheba looked round at me, her eyebrows startled into little Chinese hats.
“I mean, please,” I said, somewhat taken aback myself. “Don’t go just yet. Stay with me a bit longer.”
She came over to hug me again. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said. “You’ll see.” Then she stood up and put on her coat.
“Don’t go, Sheba,” I said again.
She looked at me curiously. “Barbara, come on. I have to go.”
I wanted to scream. Bloody Connolly. Bloody, bloody little boy. “Sheba …,” I murmured, grasping at the arm of her coat.
“Please!” she shouted and moved away so abruptly that I lost my balance and fell from the chair, managing to smash my hip on the side of her pottery wheel as I did so.
There was a strange noise from the travel cage, like a thumb being dragged across a pane of glass. Portia had woken up.
“God, Barbara, are you all right?” Sheba asked. She was peering down at me with a nice combination of impatience and alarm.
I sat for a moment, groping at my hip. “I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes. It’s just my hip.” My hip hurt like damnation as it happened, but I didn’t want to make a fuss. I peered into the travel cage. Portia was huddled down at the far end, with her fur up and claws out. “Shush. It’s all right,” I whispered through the grate.
“Sorry about that,” Sheba said. Then she slung her handbag over her shoulder and put on her hat. Was she still going to leave? Even after knocking me down? I stood up and staggered slightly.
“Do you think you’ll be all right driving home?” she asked.
“Oh yes, I’m fine,” I said. Sheba was too preoccupied to notice the frost in my voice.
“Good, good,” she said, heading for the door.
I picked up the travel cage and limped after her.
Out on the street, we embraced stiffly. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you on Monday then,” Sheba said. She was shifting anxiously from foot to foot, like someone in need of the toilet. I nodded and took out my car keys. “So, now … ,” she said, “take care of yourself.” She patted my back as I bent to unlock the car.
“Ouf,” I said, rubbing my hip. “I’ll probably have quite a bruise in the morning …” But when I turned around, she was already gone—half-running down the street, to catch her lover before he changed his mind.
13
For the next two weeks, I stayed away from Sheba. At school, I kept to my classroom during breaks, and when she approached me in the corridors, I was polite but remote. Once, she rang me at home and asked me over to her house, but I made a deliberately weak excuse as to why I couldn’t go. My mood was defiant. Enough of her, I thought. Let’s see how well she gets along without me. And then, after a while, I became rather depressed. Perhaps more confused than depressed. My life had become incoherent to me. Why did my friends always fall out with me? Why was I always being let down? Was I never to be rewarded for my constancy?
The weather that fortnight was foul. First, there were hailstorms, followed by a few days of sullen, yellow skies. Then came semihurricane winds. Four hundred London trees were felled in a single night. I wondered where, if at all, Sheba and Connolly were managing to meet. I was sleeping very badly at the time. Even when I am in good spirits, sleep does not come easily to me. I tend to wander around for ages before I get into bed, trying to put off the moment when I pull the cold sheet to my shoulder and acknowledge the closing of another day. During this period, I frequently roamed my flat until three or even four in the morning. Sometimes, I drifted off in my armchair with Portia on my lap, only to be woken, a few minutes later, by the wind shrieking through the street outside.
Portia’s health seemed worse than ever. She was spending most of the time on the sofa now, her face a Kabuki mask of despair. I grew so demoralised at one point that I was even considering taking sick leave from school and going down to my sister’s with Portia. At least, I reasoned, I’d have my meals cooked for me.
And then, just before the Christmas break, Bangs, the maths teacher, invited me on a date. He approached me slyly in the corridor one day and suggested that I join him for lunch that coming Saturday. At a restaurant. This was intriguing. I knew better than to suppose that Bangs had romantic designs on me. But even a platonic interest on his part was a surprise. Bangs had been at St. George’s for four years and, until then, he had never demonstrated the slightest enthusiasm for cultivating my acquaintance outside school. I know now that I should have declined the invitation. But, being at such a low ebb, I was inclined to see his approach as a sign—a message of hope.
Bangs was at least fifteen years younger than me, and he was a fool. (Even my most optimistic speculations did not lose sight of those facts.) But he had noticed me. He had chosen me to share his Saturday lunchtime. And who was I to pick and choose? For a few days, I’m afraid I let my imagination run away with me. I pictured myself shedding my old, unfortunate self and stepping forth into the light and air of the regular world. I would cease to be the shut-in biddy waiting around for an invitation from my one, married friend. I would become, at last, a person who had easy relations with the world, a person who spent my weekends having dates, who carried photographs in my wallet, documenting scenes from the jolly parties and rowdy barbeques and delightful christenings that I had recently attended. I remember it being of particularly piquant satisfaction to me that I was now in possession of a social plan—a personal appointment—of which Sheba knew nothing.
By the time the Saturday of my lunch date rolled around, I had grown very nervous and would probably have spent the morning working myself into one of my stews had I not been saved from such nonsense by the need to rush Portia to the vet’s. The poor thing had spent most of the previous night retching all over the living room floor. At dawn she had retreated to the sofa, where she lay mewling in the most pitiful way. I rang the vet’s answering service at seven o’clock and got an emergency appointment for nine. When I took her over there, the vet gave her a brief examination. Then he said he wanted to run more tests. I looked at my watch. In order to make it back to Archway for my hair appointment, I would have to leave Portia there on her own. I battled with my conscience for a few moments. Then I gave Portia a shamefaced kiss and hastily departed.
I loathe going to the hairdresser’s and do so as infrequently as possible, but my unhappiness over the previous fortnight had caused me to neglect my appearance. For a short time I had ceased brushing my hair altogether, and I was now badly in need of a set. The people at the salon were exhibiting the rather desperate good cheer that is characteristic of the British workplace at Christmas. All the girls were sporting sprigs of tinsel in their hair and picking, in a not very hygienic way, at a greylooking Yule log which one of the customers had brought in.
They treated me with their usual contempt. As a punishment for being not quite five minutes late, I was made to wait an agonising half an hour before I was seen to. And then, when I was getting my hair washed, I happened to open my eyes and catch the ghastly girl giggling at me and making faces at one of the other girls over my head. It was lucky for her that I was not in the mood for a fight; otherwise, rest assured, she would have caught the sharp edge of my tongue.
After my hair was finished, I had just enough time to rush back to the flat and change my clothes. I wore my black skirt and plain shoes (no silly heels this time). Then I drove down to Camden Town. The restaurant that Bangs had chosen was a new place—well, new to me anyway—called Vingt-et-trois, just off Camden High Stre
et. It was raining quite heavily when I parked the car, but I took an umbrella and made myself walk slowly around the block two times before I went in, to be sure of not being early.
I was still the first to arrive. It was dark inside the restaurant, and loud pop music was being played on a stereo system. At the maître d’s lectern, a young woman was mouthing the words to the music. She wore a T-shirt that stopped several inches above her navel and trousers that began several inches below it. I gave her Bangs’s name, but she couldn’t find it in her big book (he had failed to make a reservation) and, although there were at least six tables vacant, the girl said it was impossible to seat me until all members of my party had arrived. I became stupidly panicked at this point. She must have noticed and taken pity because she gave me a menu and said, quite pleasantly, that I could wait at the bar if I liked. The bar was in another room, through a little arch, and as she was leading me there she hooked her arm around her waist and scratched lazily at the strip of honey-coloured back between her T-shirt and trousers.
The man behind the bar was a very raucous person wearing a red Father Christmas cap. He kept shouting unintelligible greetings at his fellow employees and the three patrons who were perched on barstools. “Y’owl right, Barry?” he was bellowing at a passing waiter as I entered. He had a very enunciated, self-conscious London accent—the accent of someone taking pleasure in the distortions of dialect. When he asked me what I wanted to drink, it was with such booming aggression that, despite being rather thirsty, I shook my head and said I wanted nothing. “Nothing?” he shouted in pretend outrage. “Nothing? You sure about that?” He was smiling as he uttered these words, and the other people at the bar looked at me and smiled too. I understand now, it was just a joke—well, not a joke exactly, more a sort of aimless good humour. He was a “character,” you see. But, at the time, I had the idea that some specific point was being made. That I was being mocked. “I’m waiting for a friend,” I said, by way of explaining myself. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the pop music. “A friend?” the barman said, maintaining his tone of pantomime disbelief. “Friend, eh? That right? Waiting for a friend? You gotta have friends, aven’t ya? Yusss, friends are what it’s all about, innit?” I nodded, feeling confused and foolish. “Go on,” the barman said. “Have a drink. Have a driii-nnnkkkk. A nice glass of wine, treat yourself …” He leaned in across the bar and gave me an ironic, goggle-eyed smile.