by Freya North
‘But He’s not speaking to me,’ said Cat, now smarting about the lack of coffee that morning. ‘He’s mad at me. We never row. It was horrible. I feel sick. Suddenly Ben and I want different things, Pip. We’re totally incompatible.’
‘It’s not about how compatible you are, Cat – It’s about how you deal with incompatibility,’ said Pip. ‘When did you last tell him you loved him?’
When did Zac last tell me?
‘I Don’t honestly know,’ Cat was saying, ‘but how do I start talking? And what do you think I should say?’
On the other end of the phone, Pip was pinching the bridge of her nose and trying to strip her mind of Zac so she could concentrate on Cat.
‘You have to do the right thing,’ she heard herself say. ‘You have to open up and lay yourself bare – if you can’t do this in front of your husband, then you are in serious breach of the trust and honesty you promised him when you married him.’
Which makes me a fucking hypocrite.
‘Shall I phone him at work?’ Cat pressed. ‘Shall I ask my manager for a break?’
‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘do.’
‘And tell Ben how I feel – even though some of it sounds daft?’
‘Yes,’ said Pip, ‘you must.’
‘Say he disagrees? Say he objects?’
‘Say he doesn’t?’
‘Say He’s cross?’ said Cat.
‘Say he Isn’t?’
Cat paused. The notion of Ben’s love being just at the end of the phone, of his support and understanding being just a phone call away, of her being just moments from the comfort of his companionship, was thrilling. Suddenly, she wanted Pip off the phone.
‘Thanks,’ Cat said cheerfully. ‘I’ll phone him right now. Can I phone you again, though?’
‘You know you can,’ said Pip.
Pip hated herself for hoping that Cat wouldn’t phone her again. She didn’t want to listen to how the heart-to-heart had gone and she didn’t have the energy for further counselling. But Pip hated herself more for her intrinsic inability to take her own sound advice. How easy it was to see the right thing to do. Crystal bloody clear. Talk it through. Lay yourself bare. Show your soul and open your heart to the person closest to you, the person who transcends a need for blood ties to create a bond. How pathetic, she felt, to be fundamentally incapable of doing this herself.
Behind the information desk, Cat contrived to look important and busy. She wasn’t. She was utterly absorbed in the pleasure of planning the reconciliation. She hadn’t asked for a break because it was premature. She had to know exactly what She’d be saying before she phoned Ben. She had to be word perfect and her words needed to be honed for ultimate poetic and meaningful impact. He’d be in afternoon surgery. She couldn’t phone now, she needed the best forum and no time restraints for her soliloquy to resound. But say he was still pissed off and went to the pub instead of coming home? And say he was pissed when he then came home? She couldn’t endure another cold-shouldered night. She had to let him know that she was sorry, and soon. That there was an explanation. A text message could work – something sweet and slushy. But texts were somehow too easy to send. Who hasn’t used a text message to avoid having to talk to someone?
As she hung up from telling a customer’s answering machine that their books were awaiting collection, Cat thought about message services. About telegrams and messengers and couriers. She phoned Ben’s hospital and asked for the Sports Medicine department and when a female voice answered, Cat put on her most friendly, conniving voice.
‘Hullo? Is that Marjorie?’
‘Yes? Sports Medicine clinic – how can I help?’
‘This is Cat – Ben’s wife. We haven’t met but he speaks highly of you.’
‘Oh!’
‘Can you help me, Marjorie? I did one of those silly things – those over-emotional daft-cow things.’
‘Ah,’ said Marjorie, who had been no stranger to the syndrome in her younger days.
‘Ben has speaker phone, doesn’t he – is that how you announce his patients?’
‘Yes, That’s right, dear.’
‘Before the next patient can you tell him that his wife loves him and She’s sorry for being a madwoman and that she can’t wait to see him later?’
‘I can,’ Marjorie said with slight reluctance.
‘Oh,’ said Cat, forlorn, ‘is it something to do with hospital policy?’
‘No, dear,’ said Marjorie, ‘but can I reword it? I think I should say—In fact, He’s ready to see his next patient. You can listen in.’
Cat pressed the receiver hard against her ear, giving Jeremy who was loitering an irritated ‘Shh!’ before turning her back on him.
‘Dr York,’ Marjorie could be heard to say, ‘before I send in Miss Drew, I have been entrusted with the following announcement.’
Cat’s heart raced. Marjorie’s pitch changed, as if she was having to be heard across a football pitch. ‘Your wife wishes you to know that she loves you truly, and that she is extremely sorry for her behaviour. She would like you to know that she looks forward to your homecoming tonight – and that she would be pleased to talk through the circumstances.’
Cat couldn’t hear Ben’s response, but she fully approved Marjorie’s handling of the situation. ‘You’re a genius, Marjorie,’ she said, and she planned to send her some books in gratitude.
‘Cat!’
Cat turned to see Jeremy looking put out.
‘We do not, as a rule, take personal calls – let alone make them.’
‘I know,’ Cat beamed, ‘I’m sorry – there was a family crisis. It’s all sorted now. It won’t happen again.’
The manager thought she spoke of the personal calls.
Cat stopped beaming on her journey home. It struck her that nothing was actually solved. All She’d done, hopefully, was give Ben an inducement to come home, pacify his anger and open a door to communication. They still had to talk. And reach an understanding, an agreement.
But he wasn’t home and her confidence was instantly sapped. She started to allow herself to feel the wounded party. Why hadn’t he figured out why she might now be reluctant to start a family? Why hadn’t he been instinctively more supportive? Her mobile phone buzzed through a message.
U ok? Here 4 u. P xx.
Good old Pip, coming to the rescue. At least someone knows me inside out and understands.
‘He’s not home yet,’ Cat phoned Pip in a whisper, in case Ben should be just about to come in. She told Pip of Marjorie. She could sense her sister’s smile, her approval. ‘But suddenly I Don’t know what to say when he does come home. Say He’s still cross. Say he didn’t like my message? Say we can’t sort this out?’
‘If you look out your window, will you see him walk up the street?’
‘Yes,’ said Cat.
‘So, the sight of him will incite an emotional reaction in you. Act on it.’
I speak from experience. I could hardly bear to look at Zac when he came home half an hour ago. So I invented some urgent shopping. And I’m now advising my sister from the canned-goods aisle in Sainsbury’s.
‘You’re a genius,’ Cat told her. ‘Thank you. God, thank you, Pip.’
‘Call if you need me,’ Pip said, by rote. But Cat had already hung up.
Cat has been gazing out of the first-floor window for almost half an hour. She’s elaborately decided that if three red cars pass in succession, Ben will be the next pedestrian to walk down the street. But blue cars and white vans and the occasional candy-coloured scooter keep interrupting and there’s no sign of Ben. What a gorgeous evening. How lovely to see a couple of children playing hopscotch on the pavement. Clapham doesn’t seem so unattractive today and Boulder doesn’t seem so far away. The world seems smaller, more friendly, more manageable. Listen! That evocative jingle – an ice-cream van! When had she last had a gloriously synthetic whippy with a Flake? She can’t remember. But she heads out of the flat and down to the street. She’s seco
nd in the queue. She’s first. She’s being served.
‘A medium 99, please,’ she says.
And Cat sees Ben.
He’s turned the corner.
He’s only a hundred yards away.
‘Two!’ Cat says. ‘Make that two!’
Can Ben see me? Has he seen me yet? He has.
But is he smiling?
He is.
Cat walks fast towards Ben who is strolling along the street with his shirtsleeves rolled up, his jacket slung over his shoulder. All her words have gone, her memory stripped of the soliloquies She’s spent the day perfecting. All she can do, within yards of Ben, is brandish the ice cream She’s bought for him.
‘Look!’ she declares holding out the ice cream. Ben thinks she looks like the Statue of Liberty in jeans and a T-shirt. ‘I didn’t even take a bite of your Flake.’
‘Well,’ says Ben, ‘if That’s not a sign of your true love, then what is?’
Cat blushes and doesn’t know what to say and Ben thinks It’s funny so he dabs the tip of his ice cream against her nose. Then he kisses it off. ‘Thanks for your message,’ he says. ‘You’re a madwoman. But I’ve given Marjorie a promotion.’
They sit, busy licking, on the low wall outside their flat. Cat bites the bottom of her cornet, looks at Ben and then sucks until her cheeks pucker and the ice cream scoots down the cone. Her daft face makes Ben laugh.
‘I can’t believe you save your Flake until last,’ Cat says, knowing She’d never have the self-restraint to push the chocolate down the centre of the cornet and studiously eat around it.
‘I Don’t think I have a system,’ Ben says, ‘but I’m doing it because I know it’ll wind you up.’
‘Bastard!’ Cat says softly. She’s finished her ice cream now and she lays her head against Ben’s shoulder. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says.
‘Me too,’ says Ben. ‘I hate falling out with you.’
‘Me too,’ says Cat.
‘It’s not what we’re about,’ says Ben. He offers his cornet to her, He’s nibbled down so the Flake, somewhat phallic, stands proud. Cat takes a bite. It’s a beautiful evening. If they go inside, there’ll be the television to flick on, supper to discuss, post to open. If they walk on, They’ll hit that long patch of shade as the street bends right. So they decide to stay put, to sit on the wall and wonder what to say and who will speak first.
‘Do you not want to have a baby?’ Ben asks outright, because actually That’s the basic question he needs answered.
Cat looks uneasy. ‘No,’ she admits quietly, ‘I Don’t. Not now.’
‘Not now, not never?’ Ben probes gently.
It strikes Cat she hasn’t actually thought about it to this extent. ‘I’m so caught up in the mess of the moment,’ she admits, ‘I can’t see beyond the immediate future.’
Ben nods. ‘I know how awful all these revelations have been for you,’ he says. ‘Actually, I Don’t – I can only begin to imagine.’
‘It’s thrown into turmoil all my plans, all my previous beliefs,’ Cat explains.
Ben nods.
‘I’m not ready to be a mummy,’ Cat says sadly.
‘Because You’re not ready to accept your own parents?’ Ben suggests. ‘In retrospect, your childhood may not have been perfect, but it is over.’
Cat shrugs. ‘It’s all been so – shocking.’
‘I know. But you need to confront it all,’ Ben advises, ‘somehow. Stacey said the same, didn’t she? I Don’t know if That’s by soul-searching or full-on confrontation. You need to decide. But being in this vortex of bewilderment Isn’t good, Cat. If You’re stuck in a downward spiral, it figures you can’t move forward.’
Cat nods. Ben wonders whether to tell her about Django’s call. But he can’t really, the call was in confidence.
‘You have all these strands of your life, flailing around,’ he says. ‘You need to either tie them up, or cut them off.’
‘I know,’ says Cat, ‘but That’s terrifying.’
‘You need to face facts – quite literally,’ Ben says. ‘You should go and see Django – just you. Without me. No sisters to hide behind. Talk. Shout. Cry. I Don’t know. But you must have a million things to ask and he probably has a million things to tell.’
‘I can’t believe my father is alive,’ Cat tells him. ‘I can’t believe I am Django’s daughter. I Don’t want to see him, Ben. Should I have known? Shouldn’t I have wondered at least?’ Ben shrugs and places his hand over hers. ‘Now that I know where I come from, I Don’t quite know where I’m going.’ She pauses and rests her head on his shoulder. ‘That’s why I feel ambivalent about starting a family.’
‘I understand you may feel this is not the right time to have a baby just now,’ Ben sighs, because actually he’d truly love to have his family under way soon. He’s thirty-four years old, he feels It’s right, logical, that he should feel broody himself. ‘But I also need to know that you are open to change. And most of all, I need to know that, theoretically, I’m still the bloke you’d want to have a baby with.’
Cat jerks her head up from his shoulder and looks at him, shocked. How could big strong Ben doubt this?
Ben shrugs. ‘You have to hug me back, sometimes, you know,’ he explains.
She looks at him again and despite his strong physique, his handsome face, his silvering hair, just now he looks like a little boy. Cat stares at her knees, ashamed. Regards a smudge of ice cream on her jeans. ‘Of course there’s only you,’ she whispers. ‘My family begins with you.’
They sit on the wall and like the words.
‘But listen,’ says Ben, ‘I hate condoms. And pulling out is grim – and not sodding fair. Messy too.’
‘Blow-job?’ Cat says with meek coyness.
‘Swallow?’
She giggles.
‘The pill?’ Ben asks.
‘But I put on weight and got spotty last time,’ Cat says.
‘I still fancied you,’ says Ben.
And Cat knows that he did.
‘Perhaps,’ she says.
‘For the time being, hey?’ says Ben.
Cat gives a small nod and slips her hand into his. It’s a good enough answer for Ben.
BAD SEED
And where is she? The mother who ran off with the cowboy from Denver when her daughters were small, who reappeared with bombshells to drop thirty years later, has since returned to the United States. It’s now June and Penny has been home for a couple of weeks and though the weather is glorious, Penny hasn’t once been for ice cream. Not even a pink taster spoon. Though she’d love a sundae, nowhere but Fountains will do. Once tasted, never forsaken. However, she hasn’t felt like going there but she’d rather go without ice cream than compromise with a tub from her local store. And she’d rather go without than confront sweet Juliette and her hopes of hearing that closure was a magical thing.
The house was sparkling, the fridge was full, the washing was done and the garden was so tidy that short of untangling blades of grass with a toothcomb, there was nothing more for Penny to do. The silence in the house was deafening but a coffee morning with Marcia and Noni would be more so. So she drove. All the way to the state line. Then she drove back and sat in the drive and berated the lawn for still looking so manicured and thus unmowable. She sat in the car with the engine running calculating the hours and hours until bedtime. A beautiful home, spick and span, empty and soulless. She phoned her home number from her cell phone and listened to Bob’s voice on the answering machine. She phoned her home number again and cursed technology, denounced it as trickery that she could hear Bob’s voice so clearly when the man no longer existed. She knew she ought to re-record the message. Some might think it macabre to hear a dead man’s voice on it. And there was new information to record. She’d have to reword the message in the first person. No more ‘we’. But how could she wipe Bob’s voice away?
Penny started the car and headed out of town. She arrived at the intersection and turned right with a b
it of a sigh and soon enough turned onto the mountain road. She wasn’t heading for ice cream, or Ridge, she’d just stop at the first village, Hubbardton’s Spring. There was an easy trail there that would take her to one of the most gorgeous panoramas in the vicinity. She drove through the village and along a no-through-route, parking up soon after the road petered out into an unsurfaced one. Her eyes were filled with the lushness of early summer; sumac trees and maples cloaked in such verdant hues it was difficult to imagine them ablaze in gold and scarlet and amber in a few months’ time. Her sensible summer sandals were soon filled with powdery earth and the occasional small stone, viciously sharp despite its size. She headed for the vantage point high over the river, the land then surging and swooping to the mountains. It was one of Bob’s favourite paths. Maybe he’d meet her there. She walked with hope though she chided herself an idiot for doing so. Wasn’t she done with retracing old footsteps? After all, wherever she went now, she could look behind and see the unmistakable truth: there would only ever be one set of footprints.
There was nobody there. Of course there was nobody there.
Penny scrambled down to the cluster of flat rocks and took a seat. The purity of the air, the vividness of the view, the reality of the chill and scuff of the rock on which she sat, infused her with the clarity she needed.
I guess there’s no point in mourning him any longer, because he’s not coming back. There’s only photographs and memories. I can close my eyes and try to recall the sight and sound and smell of him but I can’t hope to conjure him.
I need to draw the proverbial line under it all. Re-record the answering machine. Find different trails to walk. I need to keep on going. Move on. I guess that’s a positive thing to do – even if at the moment there seems to be a futility and finality to it which seems negative. If I can’t hope for Bob – if I admit he’s dead – will it somehow kill him off entirely? Death might be ultimately the simplest, truest thing we’ll ever know – but it’s way too complicated for the living.
People are coming. I can hear them. I want to curse them for stealing my moment. I want to tell them they’re trespassing. This is mine – take your picnic and your laughter some place else! But Bob and I often shared this hike with other people – friends and strangers – so I can’t expect Bob’s death to bequest it sacred, private land. I’ll go. I’ll nod at these people. Maybe I’ll even say, Hi, enjoy the view, it sure is pretty today. Perhaps I can smile at them too.