‘There, look, what did I tell you,’ he announced as they sat down, jabbing his fork with some triumph at the teeming grey skies framed in the window next to their table. ‘Veritable cats and dogs. Not sandwich-bar weather at all.’ He carried on talking fast as he unloaded his tray, which contained a custard dessert as well as bread and an array of chutneys, currants and coconut shavings to go with his curry. ‘So your father’s manning the fort. That’s excellent. Means there’s no problem with New York, I take it? I usually book into one of the boutique hotels on the Upper West Side as opposed to staying somewhere more flashy downtown. You’ll need five days to cover it all. Wonderful to see Broadway braving some real drama for a change. Quite a gruelling schedule, mind you – jet-lag, late nights and lots of writing – but great fun.’ Having plunged with eagerness at his plate of food, he stopped suddenly, a wedge of lurid green meat dripping off his fork. ‘You are up for this, Matt, aren’t you? We are into February, after all, so if not …’
‘I certainly am,’ Matt cried, pleased to be able to show conviction about something. ‘My father’s fine about it – I broke the news last night. I have a friend over there who is going to put me up for the week, so I won’t even need a hotel. To be honest, I’m really looking forward to it.’
‘Splendid, splendid. And Philip appears to be playing ball, doesn’t he, about your contractual changes and so on?’ Oliver wolfed his food as he talked. ‘Bit of luck that girl pitching her hat into the ring, Erica whatever she was. What did you make of her, by the way? Any good?’
‘Erica Chastillon. I was only with her for half an hour, but yes, she seemed good. Very. bright, very enthusiastic. Have me out of a job in no time, I expect.’ Matt had aimed for a tone of wry amusement, but was aware that he sounded merely broken and defeated.
Oliver clearly thought so too. He flung his knife and fork together across his empty plate and glared across the table, tugging at his beard. ‘You’ve had – you are having – a hard time, Matthew. But the fact remains, you’re a fine writer, a fine critic. With or without a wife. And don’t you forget that. Or others might start to forget it too.’
The warning echoed in Matt’s head for the rest of the afternoon. Though the articles that needed editing for the evening deadline were both unproblematic and not too numerous, he found himself labouring over every word. Urges to call home did little to help his concentration.
‘If I can’t find the ketchup we’ll do without,’ barked Dennis when Matt rang for the second time in an hour. ‘Now bugger off back to work.’
Matt eyed the paragraph on his screen, wanting to delay the moment of returning to it. ‘No more messages, then?’
‘I told you. Louise somebody about nothing in particular and Maria somebody about looking round schools this Saturday. She’s calling back tonight. Now, if you don’t mind, some of us have got things to do.’
Matt put the telephone down and dropped his head into his hands. ‘I’m not interrupting, am I?’
‘Beth.’ He leaped round his desk to clear a stack of papers off a spare chair. ‘First day back, still getting to grips – you know how it is. Take a seat.’
* * *
‘No thanks, I’m only passing. I’ve had a meeting in another part of this godforsaken island. Why dogs, that’s what I want to know? Someone said it’s supposed to look like a dog’s leg, but it doesn’t at all – I know because I got one of those A to Z maps and checked. It’s just a U shape, nothing like a leg …’
‘It was a king.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘Some king kept his dogs there. I can’t remember which one. They barked a lot and so locals started calling it the Isle of Dogs.’
‘Well, There you go. Another mystery solved. Thank you Matt.’ She grinned ‘But the real reason I came by was to invite you to a party. A week on Saturday.’ She placed a white envelope on top of his computer terminal. ‘If you’re covering a show, come on afterwards. You won’t be the last to arrive, I promise.’
‘A party?’ Matt picked up the envelope, shaking his head doubtfully. ‘Yeah, you know, lots of people, alcohol, maybe even a good time.’
‘Thanks, Beth, that’s really kind, only I’m not sure I’d make the best sort of company at parties at the moment —’
‘Which is precisely why you should come.’ She snapped her bag shut. ‘And then there’s baby-sitting …’ he began weakly.
She snorted. ‘Baby-sitters – a euphemism for party-pooping if ever I heard one. Look,’ she continued, her voice softening, ‘you don’t have to decide now. Or even until the night. Just come along if you’re in the mood, okay?’ She flashed him a final smile and turned on her heel with a wave.
Matt watched her stride smoothly back in the direction of the lifts, aware that several of his male colleagues were doing the same.
16
The following Friday Matt arrived at the South Bank a good half an hour earlier than necessary. Louise was to join him, marking the first use in many weeks of his free companion ticket. He had made the offer during the course of one of her numerous phone calls, prompted, he decided afterwards, by a dim desire to make up for having turned down yet another string of offers to help him run his life. She had leapt on the invitation with touching enthusiasm, even when he warned her that Ibsen’s Doll House wasn’t everybody’s cup of tea and that he would not be the best company because of having to make notes in the interval and rush home to file his review afterwards.
Two weeks of juggling his job and his home life, even with the help of his father, had sharpened Matt’s impatience for the now imminent chance to give up commuting altogether. Philip Legge had delivered on his half- promise, offering Erica Chastillon a job that would release him to the luxury of a freelancing role from home. His relief at the news had been tempered only by the fact that, as warned, it would entail a significant drop in salary and that, because of other commitments, Erica could not start for another six weeks. Matt had broken this news to Dennis the night before, waving a copy of the Lady, which he had bought from Mr Patel’s on the way home, and insisting that he would find some professional help in the meantime.
‘Are you saying I can’t manage?’
‘No, I’m saying that I am preying on your kindness enough as it is. That six weeks is a lot longer than two and for that relatively short span of time I can afford to pay some highly trained female to do all the things that you are doing for free.’
‘And what about Josie?’
Matt sighed. The gamble in that regard had so far paid off extremely well. In the space of barely two weeks she had not only won the hearts of both father and son but had also asserted impressive control over the laundry. Tidy piles of ironing had begun to replace the crumpled heaps behind the sofa; socks were matched and neatly tucked into their partners, underpants folded into smooth flat halves, and creaseless shirts left on coat hangers on the door handles of Matt and Dennis’s bedrooms. ‘Yes, well, I agree it would be a shame to let her go, but then I certainly couldn’t afford to keep her on as well.’
His father had snatched the magazine away. ‘And you don’t have to. We’re all managing perfectly well as things are.’ He paused, puffing out his chest. ‘Though if it’s because you’d rather not have me around, then for God’s sake spit it out. I’m not so senile I can’t see that for a man of thirty- one to have his father hanging about the house is not an ideal situation.
Though I try not to interfere or —’
‘It’s not that,’ Matt assured him, smiling in spite of himself at the implications behind the remark. There was no question of Dennis cramping his style. There was no style to cramp. His social life was a graveyard and would continue to be so with or without the presence of his father. ‘You’re amazingly tolerant of me, wonderful with Joshua – I’ve no problem at all on that score. Even Hoppit’s bad breath is something I’m coming to know and love —’
‘So I’ll stay,’ Dennis had retorted, snapping his jaw shut, his eyes twinkling
with satisfaction. ‘Until this new job contract of yours kicks in anyway.’
Having bought a bottle of beer, Matt eased his way through the gathering throng of theatre-goers and out on to the concrete walkway running parallel with the river. Leaning his elbows on the balustrade, he cast his eyes up and down the black band of water, taking in the impressively illuminated skyline and the glittering bracelets of bridges. From somewhere along the Embankment came the dim wail of an emergency siren. Matt squinted in its direction, following the sound as it joined the broken stream of yellow light flowing across Blackfriars. The scale of the scene, the sense of myriad human activity, was soothing. His domestic upset, so momentous in his own mind, was nothing, he realised, no more than the tiniest ripple in the sea of human experience.
A couple, their features impossible to make out in the evening light, had wandered to within a few yards of him.
‘All I’m saying is …’
‘That’s all you ever say …’
Two lit cigarettes danced in the air as they argued, performing darting figures of eight and half-circles. ‘You say that, but you did not …’
‘How was I to know …’ The woman’s voice rose briefly to a pitch of audible indignation. Matt glimpsed an airy bouffant of silvery blond hair and the glint of jewel-studded earlobes. ‘… you bloody well don’t …’
He edged along the balustrade out of earshot, fighting one of the spurts of fondness for Kath that hit him from time to time and marvelling that it could be triggered by something as unedifying as marital bickering. The air felt colder suddenly. From nowhere a breeze was picking up momentum, whirling off the water and flinging itself in his face like an icy damp cloth. Pulling up the collar of his coat, he headed back towards the light and the mounting hubbub visible through the theatre’s glass doors.
Louise was waiting at the entrance to the Cottesloe as they had agreed, her overcoat slung over one arm and her bag dangling from her shoulder. She wore a black velvet trouser suit, with a satin brocade trimming and a pink mohair jumper underneath. Her hair looked blonder than he remembered and as smooth as glass.
‘Matt – God, I’m so hot – I always forget what this place is like. I wish to goodness I hadn’t brought this.’ She tossed her coat impatiently. ‘With the underground carpark there’s really no need, is there?’
He kissed her on both cheeks, noting the way the pink flush of her skin accentuated the glossy, baby-doll look of her appearance. ‘There’s a place we could leave your coat —’
‘No, don’t worry, it’s no bother really. Look, I bought a programme. But I expect you get those free as well?’
Matt laughed. ‘No, but they go on expenses. I’ve got boxes of the bloody things. A history of my career caged in cardboard. Takes up half the bloody attic – used to drive Kath mad …’ Remembering a private resolution to keep the evening light-hearted, he broke off uncertainly. ‘Would you like a drink? I’m already one ahead of you, I’m afraid. Got here early. Winding down in the office, rather. They’ve agreed I can work from home, which is good. Start in a few weeks. My father’s going to manage things till then, together with that girl I told you about, the one from the playground.’
‘Oh, Matt, I’m so pleased.’ She linked her arm through his as they threaded their way back towards the bar. ‘You said you would sort it out and you did. I think that’s marvellous. I think the way you are coping is marvellous – just adapting, not looking back, being there for Josh.’ When he handed her the glass of white wine she had requested she raised it to him with shining eyes. ‘Here’s to you. You’re going to be all right, I can just feel it in my bones.’
‘I wish I could share your certainty,’ he laughed, touched in spite of himself by the warmth of her assurance.
A few minutes later they were seated side by side three rows from the front watching the curtain rise. As the production unfolded, Matt found his reactions hampered by the fact that he had reviewed a near-perfect interpretation of the work a few years before. In comparison, this female lead’s simpering show of marital subjection seemed to him to be grossly overdone, while the husband began shouting out his words long before the climax of the story was in his sights. Louise, in contrast, sat bolt upright in her seat, clearly enthralled. During the interval she talked nonstop, even when Matt pointedly set to work with his notepad and pen.
‘The worst thing is I do that with Anthony,’ she chattered. ‘You know, when I want something that I know he’ll just hate. Like the eggshell pink we’ve got in our en suite – I’ve got all sorts of ways of pretending to agree with him but at the same time saying just enough to push him the other way. God, isn’t that awful? I’d never thought of myself as calculating before,’ she exclaimed, sounding thrilled.
Matt grunted absently, barely glancing up from his jottings. The set had struck him as cumbersome and self-consciously cluttered. He wanted a witty metaphor to sum it up, something to convey the almost comical way in which the actors had seemed to dodge round all the props as if fearful of tripping headlong.
‘But it’s so lovely to feel stimulated,’ continued Louise, undeterred by his evident preoccupation. ‘To find ideas bursting inside my head. I mean, I just don’t seem to get many ideas these days. I’m afraid the old adage about motherhood annihilating brain cells is probably true – and then you get on a sort of slippery slope where the fewer you have the fewer you’re likely to have. Sometimes I try and decide what I think about something – you know, something on the news or the radio – and I simply can’t come to any conclusions. I just don’t feel I know enough to make any definitive judgments.’ She sighed. ‘And the worst of it is that I don’t think Anthony expects me to either. All we ever talk about is the children or what to eat for dinner.’
‘That’s all most cohabiting parents ever talk about,’ said Matt, resignedly slotting the lid back on his pen and giving her his full attention.
‘But you have ideas all the time. Look at you, scribbling away there. I always read your stuff, you know, Matt and it’s so … interesting. And beautifully written. Not that I’m what you’d call a great connoisseur of the written word. Magazines and newspaper headlines – I don’t seem to have the energy for anything else these days.’ She swigged the last of her wine, ordered for the interval by Matt before they took their seats. ‘Anthony reads all the time, of course, journals and so on. And history books.’ She slapped her thighs. ‘God, he loves history books, especially anything to do with war. Perhaps that’s why he’s just brimming with ideas about everything. When we go out or have people round I watch him sometimes in amazement. There is nothing he doesn’t have a view on, no opinion which he isn’t prepared to deliver with all the conviction of a gospel truth. It’s really rather incredible,’ she concluded with a sigh. ‘And then there’s silly old me, not knowing what I think about anything.’
‘There are very few things on which I have a coherent view,’ said Matt kindly. ‘And if I need an idea on the spot I just make it up. Like this lot.’ He tapped the notebook with the back of his hand. ‘I try to be genuine, but sometimes a little fabrication is required, to give a piece shape, to make it interesting, as you so kindly remarked.’
‘You’re very clever, Matt,’ she declared, wagging her finger at him as they returned to their seats.
‘I thought he overdid it a bit in the end, didn’t you?’ said Louise afterwards. ‘All that weeping and wailing. But I liked her very much. When will your piece come out? I can’t wait to read it, having seen it together and so on. Oh, Matt, I have enjoyed myself, thank you so much.’
‘Sorry we can’t have dinner or anything, but I —’
‘No, don’t apologise, I quite understand. I ate heaps with the children.
Would you like me to drop you home? That is if I can find the car – I’m such a pea-brain when it comes to remembering where I’ve left the bloody thing.’
‘Thanks, but I drove myself.’ He held the lift doors back for her as she stepped inside. Down in the carpa
rk, their footsteps and voices echoed round the concrete. ‘I’m that way.’ He pointed to the far side of the concourse.
‘And I think I’m that way.’
‘You haven’t heard from Kath again, have you?’ The question burst out of him, revealing all the desperation he had sought to hide. Louise, who had been about to tip her face for a farewell kiss, rocked back on her heels, shaking her head. ‘You’ve got to try and forget her, Matt,’ she said quietly. ‘Me too. We’ve got to move on.’
He clenched his hands into fists. ‘It’s not that I want her back – I’m not sure I do any more – but I’ve started worrying that she will change her mind about Josh … that she will try to take him from me.’
‘Oh, Matt, you dear thing,’ she gasped, putting her arms round him. ‘She won’t, I’m sure she won’t. I do believe she’s really gone for good. And you’ve done so much already, coping. Any person judging the situation would see that.’ She let go of him and looked into his face, her eyes glassy. ‘Remember, Matt, she’s the one who walked out on us. She’s the one who left.’
* * *
Matt stood watching as she trotted away, peering uncertainly between the lines of cars. He wasn’t the only one who had been betrayed, he reminded himself. Louise had lost her closest confidante and friend. She had almost as many adjustments to make as he did; not in practical terms maybe, but inside her own head. He turned away to search for his own car, pondering how deeply insulting desertion was for those left behind.
17
A Family Man Page 13