by Voss, Louise
I shook my head, bemused. ‘Who’s Tracy?’
‘My ex,’ he said, rather impatiently. ‘The psycho one I went out with for about six months, and then dumped when I got the scholarship to KU. She never forgave me. Well, you won’t believe this, but she rang me today.’
‘Oh? What’s this got to do with the party?’
‘Um. Well, the thing is, she’s always had it into her head that I dumped her for you.’
I was still confused. ‘But you didn’t know me before you came to Kansas.’
‘I know. But when I came back with you, and you were pregnant, she convinced herself that the whole scholarship thing was an elaborate set-up to enable you and me to start our new life together, away from her.’
‘But that’s crazy!’
‘I know. I told you she was psycho. You must remember me telling you about her.’
I remembered no such thing, other than vague mentions of a girl called Tracy with whom Ivan had gone out for a while when he was at school.
‘I still don’t see what this has to do with the party.’
I had a feeling of unease creeping up my chest and neck, like a blush.
‘I haven’t heard from her for years,’ he said. ‘But she rang me this morning on the mobile. I couldn’t even work out who she was at first – I certainly didn’t recognize her voice. Turns out that she got a job as a sports journalist – she was always pretty sporty. She’d found out that I’m invited to the party—’
‘We’re invited to the party,’ I corrected frostily.
‘Sorry, we’re,’ he conceded. ‘And then she went all funny, and said, “Is she going?” I said who do you mean, and she goes, “Her. The bitch that stole you off me.” I told her, Susie, that you had nothing to do with our break-up, and I said it was fifteen years ago anyway, so what was the big deal, etc. etc., but then she said, “We need to talk about this. I’m coming over to your club, now.” ’
‘What? She didn’t, surely. After fifteen years?’ I was horrified.
‘She did. She turned up when I was coaching two Juniors. Stood at the side of the court, crying, can you believe it.’
I couldn’t – and didn’t – believe it. ‘Was she on drugs?’
‘Possibly. I had to stop my lesson halfway through to go and talk to her, but then she started screaming at me. It was very embarrassing.’
Ivan looked really upset now, so I put a semi-sympathetic hand on his hard leg.
‘What was she saying?’
He sighed theatrically. ‘She said I’d ruined her life, that she thought we were going to get married, that she’d been waiting for me to break it off with you and come back to her …All that kind of stuff. I kept saying she couldn’t possibly have waited fifteen years without contacting me until now, but she said she had been married herself for a bit, to someone who she thought would help her get over me – but it hadn’t worked out. Then she started, um, being rather threatening about you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yeah. She said she was going to this party, and if she saw you there with me, I’d regret it.’
‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’
‘I don’t know. She’s quite a well-known journalist, apparently. She could make things very awkward for me if she started printing lies. Or worse, she may have meant that she’d do something to hurt you …’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. ‘You’re not seriously suggesting that I can’t go to the party because of her?’
‘Well, I’d hate for you to be in any sort of danger. Or for her to cause trouble for me.’
I was outraged. ‘Danger? That’s a bit bloody melodramatic, isn’t it? Who does she work for? I’ll phone them up and get her fired. I’m your wife, for heaven’s sake. She can’t threaten us like that! It’s totally unacceptable, and there’s no way I’m not going to that party.’
Needless to say, Ivan got his way, and I didn’t go to the party. I was so upset about it that I actually cried, burying my face in the soft fabric of the Dementor outfit after Rachel had gone to bed, picturing Ivan having a great time, flirting and drinking and appraising women with that particular hungry expression on his face which he never wore when looking at me.
When he slid into bed beside me in the small hours of that morning, I badgered him to tell me about the party, and if Tracy had given him any grief, but all he managed to mumble was, ‘She didn’t show up’, before rolling over on to his back and snoring, loudly, for the rest of the night. I could tell that he was pretty drunk, though, because I punched him in the side three times to try to get him to turn over, and he didn’t budge at all.
I lay awake all night, my teeth gritted, silent tears of rage falling sideways into the pillow. It wasn’t just the party, of course, it was Ivan. If he’d cared at all about me, he could easily have called me a taxi and got me over there, better late than never. Hell, I’d have called the taxi myself, if he’d only rung me.
His argument later, of course, was that he was afraid she’d show up at any minute, or that perhaps she hadn’t been invited after all but was hanging around outside.
‘I wouldn’t want her to do anything stupid,’ he said. ‘How terrible would we feel if she lost it completely and topped herself?’
Personally, I thought, I’m not sure that I would feel all that terrible. Sad for her, of course, but really, I did not see that I had anything at all to feel guilty about, and I resented the fact that Ivan was implying somehow that I did.
I attempted to find out about Tracy; who she was, who she worked for, but it was 1995, before the Internet was in every household, and I only drew blanks when I rang up all the major daily newspapers’ sports desks to see if anyone knew or employed her.
I asked Gordana if she remembered her, but all she said was, ‘Oh yes, Tracy. Nice girl, I always thought. Very quiet, though. What is that expression: wouldn’t say boo to a pigeon?’
‘Goose,’ I’d replied, thinking that that didn’t sound a bit like the woman Ivan had described. Next time I’d taken Rachel to her tennis practice I’d asked some of the other Juniors’ mothers if they’d witnessed the scene with a strange woman crying and screaming at Ivan, but nobody had.
In fact, the mysterious Tracy appeared to make a miraculous recovery from the terrible loss of a relationship which had apparently obsessed her for fifteen years, and promptly vanished out of Ivan’s life again. But I couldn’t forget her. Something inside me had buckled so far under the weight of my suspicions about Ivan’s liberties with the truth, that I just couldn’t stand it anymore. I hated myself for it, but I became a checker for lipstick on collars, a pocket-rummager, a phone-bill analyser. Nothing concrete came out of it, except the gradual erosion of my self-respect, and trust for Ivan – for he did nothing to assuage my increasing fears.
‘This is not me,’ I thought one morning as I was feeling through the lining of his washbag in search of condoms that we had no need of, since I was on the Pill.
‘I don’t want to be like this,’ I thought later, checking his diary for tiny inexplicable initials or restaurant bookings.
‘I want a divorce,’ I announced quietly a few weeks later, one evening after he’d just got in from squad training. ‘I don’t trust you anymore, and I don’t think I love you, either.’
He was sweaty and stubbly, in his oldest tracksuit and beat-up tennis shoes, but I still had to sit on my hands to stop myself opening his racket bag to see if he had a smart suit in there, the suit he must have worn on the date he had probably just been on. Perhaps he was sweaty from making love all evening to some girl in a hotel bedroom. Perhaps the stubble was a decoy to throw me off the trail.
He had leaned against the doorframe, exhausted, baggy-eyed, filling the doorway with his bulk, just looking at me, a wreck on the sofa. There was no fight left in me. And as I sat there, I remembered good things about him: his face when Rachel was born; the way he cried for joy when she slithered out of me and looked up at us with her own perfect littl
e face. His dedication to so many things – although no longer to me – his enthusiasm and energy and drive. His gorgeous eyes.
I waited for the outraged refusal to accept what I had said. The impassioned pleas for another chance; the protestation of the love he really had for me, but which had become buried under the pressures of competition, travel, and perhaps just the inevitable familiarity of a marriage. The apologies, the tears, the wooing back again.
‘It’s probably for the best,’ was what he said instead.
Then, ‘I’m going for a shower.’
Two days later he moved out. Two months later I moved back to Kansas.
We were divorced within a year, on the grounds of his unreasonable behaviour. He never admitted to his affairs, but I knew he’d had them – at least one. And now, all these years later, I knew that I’d been right.
Chapter 41
Rachel
‘Want a cup of tea, Gordana?’ I ask.
From where she is propped up on pillows on the sofa, Gordana looks over at me standing in the doorway. She rarely goes to bed, unless she is feeling particularly sick, instead choosing to rest fully dressed on the sofa downstairs. She says it’s so that she can see out into the garden, and also so Ted and I don’t have to run up and down stairs after her all day – like I could run up and down stairs! – but we all know that really it’s because she can’t bear anyone to think of her as an invalid. She hates to be seen in her dressing gown and slippers.
Today she has a sketchpad and a charcoal pencil balanced on her lap, and she is making a few desultory black lines on an empty sheet, which I think are supposed to represent tree branches. She didn’t want to be seen doing nothing – as if we’d judge her for that, I think, almost indignantly.
‘Thank you, darling, if you’re making one, that would be lovely. Be careful with the trolley, though, won’t you? And perhaps you could help me with this drawing? I cannot make this tree look like that one out there. You are so good, please explain to me how you do it. And, Rachel—’
‘Yes?’
‘We do love having you here, you know. You will stay as long as you like, won’t you?’
I hop into the room, feeling the tickle of the thick carpet fibres beneath my bare foot, and sit down on the arm of the sofa. Unlike me, Gordana is wearing tights, as usual, underneath neatly pressed navy slacks, and even through the tea-brown stocking toes I can see that her toenails are beautifully pedicured. I give her toes an affectionate squeeze. In the background, the radio is playing old jazz songs.
I pick up her sketchbook and inspect the drawing, which is indeed pretty poor. With a few quick strokes, I transform the tree into a towering oak, and then sketch in a little Jackson, jumping around underneath it. It earns me a laugh from Gordana, and a feeling of pride in my chest, not unlike the pleasure of winning a match against a tricky opponent.
‘I love being here. It’s so different to living with Dad and Anthea. I always felt so in the way there, as if Anthea only ever relaxed when I went out. They just needed their own space, I guess …’ I hesitate, concerned. ‘But you and Pops do, too – need your own space, I mean,’ I add awkwardly. ‘You’ve got Mum coming and going too, and what with all the stress of Dad’s court case coming up, and Jackson and everything – I do worry that you’re just being polite, and really you both would love us to leave you to it. Isn’t Pops sick of ferrying me to physio three times a week?’
She laughs faintly, and adjusts the neat bandanna covering her patchy hair.
‘Come on, Rachel darling, you know us better than that. If we wanted to be alone, you’d be the first to hear about it. And Ted loves giving you lifts in and out of Kingston, you know he does. He says you are big breath of fresh air for him.’
I smile a watery smile. Gordana always knows the right thing to say to make me feel better – although at the moment I feel more like a hole in the ozone layer than a breath of fresh air.
‘Thanks,’ I say, hauling myself up again and out into the kitchen on my crutches, before she can see how much her words mean to me. I am relieved, because it’s been playing on my mind considerably. I don’t want to go back to the place I used to call home. I don’t want to live with Dad and Anthea, either or both; and not just because of what Dad’s going through. I’m not a rat abandoning a sinking ship. I’d stay there if I thought for a moment they needed me more than Gordana and Pops, but they definitely don’t.
And I can’t stay here forever, either. It’s fine now, while Gordana still needs company and a bit of help, but despite what she’s just said, they won’t want me or Mum here for too much longer. They are so independent.
I’m not doing too badly myself, either, in terms of independence. I’m getting pretty nimble, though I say so myself. I’m able to make the tea on one leg, put pot and cups on to a gilt hostess trolley and, leaning on the bar of the trolley instead of on my crutches, hop back into the living room, pushing it in front of me like a wheeled zimmer frame. Luckily it’s a sturdy piece of equipment. It hasn’t seen so much service since the 1970s, and it makes me feel like a one-legged dinner lady; but it gets the job done.
When I return with the tea for Gordana, she is singing along to ‘Summertime’ on the radio, in a low, wistful voice whose depths and clarity makes my stomach twist with fresh emotion. I pause just outside the door to listen. She has the most beautiful voice. I wonder if it is a source of real sorrow to her that she never became a singer; or whether it was just another lost dream: something she grumbled about not achieving but which wasn’t ever a serious proposition. You could never be sure with Gordana. Sometimes the telling was what was important, rather than the content. I’ve heard the story of how Sandie Shaw took the life Gordana wanted so many times that it is more like a myth.
Have I followed my dream, I wonder? Everyone always congratulates me, tells me that I have – but I’m starting to wonder what my real dream is?
I decide it might finally be time for me to rent somewhere; get a new life. Perhaps Kerry will know a place. She’s the one with the wide social circle – she even has friends who don’t play tennis! I certainly don’t have any of those. I’ve been half thinking about asking Mum to go halves with me on the rent of a small house, if she’s planning to stay, but she is beginning to make noises about going back to Kansas again.
Mum seems very down lately, and has been spending more and more time at her friend Corinna’s. I worry that she’s bored of being with me, or feels uncomfortable being around Gordana, but whenever we cross paths, she hugs me or touches my face, trying to smile, saying, ‘Sorry, Rach, it’s not you.’
I put it down to her sorrow about losing Billy, but she eventually confessed that she can’t bear the thought of bumping into Dad. I don’t really understand why. Neither of them will admit to a confrontation, although something must have happened. I mean, it was only a couple of years ago that we all had Christmas dinner together and that, whilst not exactly a bundle of laughs, hadn’t been too bad.
‘Oh, Rachel, I didn’t see you there,’ says Gordana, turning mid-song to look at me.
‘Sorry. I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I just love listening to you singing.’
‘I love singing,’ she says softly.
I wheel in the trolley and park it in front of a nest of tables by her side, letting her sit up and do the honours. I wouldn’t dare serve tea to Gordana without milk in a jug and sugar in a bowl. I watch her thin hands put the tea strainer over the cups and pour.
‘So, what are you up to today?’ she asks, handing me a cup and saucer.
It’s been so long since I’ve ‘done’ anything that I’m kind of surprised she has even asked. We have all fallen into a quiet, safe routine, centred on Dad or Pops driving Gordana to and from her chemo treatments.
Between chauffeuring duties, Dad then vanishes again, coaching (privately, we assume, because he’s not at the club) and placating Anthea, or whatever his life consists of. I fit in my physio sessions at Kingston Hospital and some basic n
on-weight-bearing training in the little gym in the village near Gordana and Pops’s house, but nothing more exciting than that. I like it this way. Dad’s next hearing and Gordana’s recovery hang over us all, like two great boulders teetering on the edge of a high cliff, and so the quieter life is, the better, as we wait with bated breath to see if they are going to drop. And if they drop, how hard they shatter; how much damage they do.
Days are measured by Gordana’s cycles of rest and activity; if she is feeling wiped out, we do jigsaws, reading out loud, sketching: invalid activities carefully disguised as hobbies, like a mother trying to get her child to eat vegetables by chopping them up into tiny pieces and smuggling them into the bolognese sauce. How much would she hate that I’m thinking of it like that! But on the days she feels more normal, we do other stuff: shopping trips and the cinema or theatre, with Pops a willing driver and bag-carrier.
The only thing neither of us wants to do is to go to the tennis club. Gordana’s good friends come to visit her here, but she can’t face the inevitable nudges and whispers about Dad’s scandalous arrest that she knows would fly around her if she went down there. The same goes for me too, but in addition, I don’t want to have to see Mark and Sally-Anne together. I can’t bear the thought of him flashing her secretive little smiles from the next court, or seeing his arm resting casually around her shoulders.
I wonder if I’ll ever have a serious boyfriend again.
Maybe it’s because twenty-three is, in tennis years, well into middle age, but I have a horrible nagging fear that maybe I’m destined to be an old spinster in all walks of life.
‘Actually,’ I say, remembering that Gordana has asked me a question, ‘I was thinking of getting the bus back to Dad’s this afternoon. I’m easily nifty enough on the crutches now, and I need to collect some gear from the house.’
‘Are you sure you’re up to the walk from the bus stop?’ she asks carefully.
I shrug, but suddenly can’t stop the frustration from bubbling up inside me.