‘I’m so sorry,’ Guy says, realizing his blunder now. ‘Please leave,’ she orders.
Guy gets up, and I can’t help but notice Jack grin as he watches him leave the room. ‘Nancy, it was an innocent mistake,’ both Nick and I assure her, but it’s said in vain. She looks distraught, before emitting one giant moan and bursting into tears.
I look over to the door, wanting to rush after Guy, but then Jack’s mobile rings yet again. ‘They can leave a message,’ I insist, gesturing to Nancy, but when he looks at the number on the screen he takes the call and walks briskly out of the room.
‘I’ll be back in a second,’ I promise Nick and Nancy, determined to catch up with Guy. I open the front door; it’s pouring with rain. I race down the slippery wet steps and towards a white van. ‘Wait!’ I call out to him. ‘Don’t go!’
36
I wake the following morning, disorientated. Slowly recollections from the night before come back to me. I reach over to my bedside table and pick up my mobile. No message from Guy. I’d asked him to text me when he arrived home.
Last night, I’d caught up with him just as he was unlocking his white van outside Nancy’s house. I wasn’t sure how much Guy had had to drink. ‘I’m sorry,’ I told him breathlessly.
‘I had no idea, I wasn’t thinking,’ he explained, opening the passenger door, and quickly I stepped inside and sat down next to him.
The heavy rain slashed against the windscreen, my hair was damp. ‘I know,’ I told him, ‘you don’t have to go. Are you OK to drive?’
‘Fine. I’m not over the limit,’ he assured me.
‘I’m sorry about the way Jack and Nancy spoke to you about your job. She loves to tell me I’m just a shop girl.’ I’d smiled, hoping he wasn’t hurt.
We both sat quietly for a minute or so, listening to the rain. I rubbed my arms to keep warm.
‘Go back inside,’ Guy said eventually when the rain had settled. He gestured to a panel of buttons in his van. ‘You must be cold, the heater doesn’t work.’ He raised an eyebrow at my very short skirt.
‘I’m sorry,’ I apologized again.
‘Gilly, please don’t worry.’ He smiled that endearing smile. ‘Us gardeners,’ he said, ‘we don’t get out much. I had a great time.’
I hear the sound of water coming from the bathroom. Now, as for Jack, we slept in separate rooms last night. Jack was too drunk even to notice. His head thumped against the pillow the moment he sat down on his bed, so I left him to it. Until he apologizes for behaving like a twat last night I’m not going to speak to him. When the cab had dropped us home last night and I was carrying my bag of presents inside, Jack picked up Guy’s hat and said, ‘When are you going to wear that thing? Out on your bike selling onions?’
He enters my bedroom with a cheerful ‘Morning!’ as he towel-dries his hair and virtuously tells me that he’s already been out for a run, which has shifted his hang-over. He didn’t wake me because when he stuck his head round the door, I was sound asleep.
I sit up and pull the duvet closely around me, watching Jack get dressed.
‘Nancy would be wonderful on TV,’ he says, perched on the end of my bed, putting on his shoes, unable to sense the atmosphere and smiling about something. ‘I love the fact she’s been pretending to cook all this time,’ he says. ‘I think it’s hilarious, rather charming too.’ His telephone rings. ‘Sorry,’ he mouths, taking the call outside on the bedroom landing. I lie back in bed, cross. Who’s he talking to so early in the morning?
‘Who was it?’ I ask, when he comes back into the room. I’m sure I heard him say Vanessa.
‘Just work.’
‘It’s quite early to call, isn’t it? It’s only seven o’clock.’
‘Are you checking up on me again?’ He smiles, but I don’t let him get away with it this time.
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Your phone kept on ringing last night too. Who were you talking to?’
His eyes darken. ‘Don’t ruin it, Gilly.’
‘Ruin what?’
He ignores me. ‘I’ll see you later.’
I rush to follow him.
‘Don’t ruin what?’ I repeat. ‘What exactly have we got going on here?’ I ask him at the top of the stairs.
He looks up at me. ‘We’re having a fun time together,’ he says, as if talking to a moron.
‘Fun? Is that what this is? I thought I meant a bit more to you than that.’
‘I’m not listening to this.’
‘Wait! Don’t you dare go!’ I join him at the front door. ‘If this is leading nowhere, tell me now.’ Ed was always ‘live for the day rather than worry about tomorrow’ and I’m not wasting my time going down that dead-end road again.
‘Gilly, what’s got into you?’
‘I know nothing about you,’ I burst out.
‘I’m a private person, Gilly, always have been.’
‘So private I don’t know who you are.’
‘I have to go.’
‘That’s right. Avoid my questions.’
‘You ask too many.’
‘I didn’t like the way you talked to Guy either,’ I say now.
‘He can talk!’ he shouts back, before slamming the door in my face.
I’m fuming in the shower. What is Jack hiding? I’m not going to be made a fool of again. This relationship, if that’s what you can call it, it’s all on Jack’s terms.
Walking round the park later that morning, still cross, my mind wanders from Jack to Guy, Guy to Jack, Nancy to Guy, me to Jack and then to Ed.
So much has changed since my last birthday. My life is going backwards. This time last year Ed and I were engaged. I always thought he would propose in the conventional way, over a candlelit supper, or on a gondola during a weekend trip to Venice, or on my birthday he would save the smallest present until last. For each occasion I would prepare my acceptance speech, just as an actress prepares her speech for the Oscars. Dad used to call me repeatedly, saying, ‘Any news?’
Ed’s proposal happened in a crowded lift at Covent Garden station late one night. He’d taken me to see CosÌ fan tutte. I remember being squashed up against a couple arguing like fishwives and I’d whispered to Ed, ‘God, can you imagine if this lift got jammed and we were stuck with these two all night?’
‘I wouldn’t mind being stuck. I’d have you,’ he said. He clutched my hand. ‘Will you marry me, Gilly?’
‘Shush!’ I said. This had not been my rehearsed reaction at all. For months now I’d imagined flinging my arms around him and saying, ‘Yes! Oh yes!’
The first person I called was my father. He couldn’t bring himself to say ‘congratulations’. That’s not his style. Instead he said, ‘About time,’ but I could hear the happiness in his voice. He approved of Ed. I called Susie and Anna, who both wanted to know exactly how he had proposed; I wasn’t allowed to skimp on any of the detail.
When we emerged from the lift and passengers threaded off in different directions, Ed asked me why I was being so quiet.
I took his hand, telling him that his proposal had taken me by surprise, that’s all. It was the last thing I’d been expecting him to ask in a crowded lift.
‘I only said it to shut the fishwives up,’ he said, before adding, ‘I’m sorry, I should have asked you a long time ago.’
I should have asked you . . . Well, why didn’t he? For the first time I find myself feeling differently about Ed. No longer do I have that deep heartache that we didn’t marry. I wanted that security, but did we love one another? Would we have married for the right reason?
Oh Guy, why haven’t you called? I don’t know why, but I’m nervous. Did you get home OK? My phone rings and I pick it up, without thinking. ‘Guy?’
‘Sorry to disappoint you.’
It’s Jack. ‘About this morning,’ he starts. ‘I’m sorry. And I’m sorry also if I was rude to your friend. It’s just I felt he was judging me, and I’m sick of the way people do that, and I know I had too much to drink.’
<
br /> ‘Look, it doesn’t matter,’ I say, no energy to argue.
‘But listen, I’ve booked us into this five-star hotel in Somerset in December, the weekend after Stargazer ends.’
‘Lovely,’ I say vaguely, still scanning the park for him. He crashed on his way home. He’s in hospital. I can hear ambulance sirens.
‘Gilly?’
‘Um?
‘You’re going to love this hotel. I’ll send you the details.’
When Jack hangs up, I try him again. No answer. When my telephone rings I rush to answer it, but can’t ignore my disappointment when it’s Anna, ringing from the office, asking me how I’m feeling this morning.
37
It’s nearly one o’clock and Mari’s out, buying us both some lunch. The shop’s been quiet this morning so I’ve finally started some writing, and I’m enjoying it. It’s also been a good distraction because Guy still hasn’t called me back. I look at my mobile. No messages. Mari didn’t see him earlier in the park either. ‘Why am I worrying about him?’ I ask Ruskin.
On my own, with only the sound of Ruskin and Basil’s heavy breathing coming from the sofa, I glance at the Venetian vase, poking out from under the table and decide it could easily be knocked if somebody isn’t paying attention. Carefully I pick it up and glance at the twothousand-pound price tag. I survey the room to see if there is any space on one of the tables. Ah, it could just squeeze onto the middle shelf.
I fetch the ladder from the basement, and Ruskin and Basil stir from all the activity, watching me as I climb it. Clutching the vase, boldly I take each step, but when I hear the tinkle of a bell and a customer entering the shop my balance falters and next thing I know I’m watching the vase fly through the air. Then I hear the terrible sound of shattering china.
‘What am I going to do?’ I say in despair, wrapping the broken pieces in newspaper. ‘Mari’s going to kill me! It’s your fault you know.’
‘My fault?’
‘Yes, your fault! Everything’s your fault, Guy,’ I add when he hands me some flowers. ‘A belated birthday present,’ he says.
Any moment now Trouble is going to break another precious piece of glass with her wagging tail. After I’ve put the deep red dahlias picked from Guy’s garden into a vase, we decide to let the dogs out into the back garden.
‘You weren’t in the park this morning,’ I say, as we continue to clear up the mess.
‘The park’s like an office,’ he remarks. ‘If you’re not there, you’re off sick.’
‘I was worried.’
‘Worried?’
‘You didn’t text me. I still feel bad, about last night.’
When Guy was more or less kicked out of the house last night, Nancy had turned to me and said, ‘You are not to bring that man into my home again, do you understand?’
Later, during coffee, when she’d calmed down, she said, ‘Jack, on the other hand, is welcome any time. Now he’s a gentleman.’ Jack had smiled at that.
‘Oh God, last night was a disaster,’ I admit now to Guy, laughing nervously as I finish wrapping the broken pieces in newspaper and hiding the damage in a black bin bag. ‘I think you’re banned from the house,’ I tell him.
‘Am I?’ Guy is smiling too.
We both sit down on the sofa.
‘It was a fucking disaster,’ I repeat. ‘You’re kicked out of the house and I’m some sad old spinster waiting for her time to come.’
‘Well, I’m just a gardener!’
‘I’m just a shop girl!’
‘I’m thirty-seven!’
‘I’m thirty-five!’
When I see Mari walking outside the shop window with our lunch and coffees, towards the front door, I stop laughing immediately. ‘How am I going to tell her about the vase?’ I say.
‘Blame it on me,’ Guy whispers. The doorbell tinkles, Mari says hello to Hatman, before asking if he’d like to have some lunch with us. She’s bought some Greek salads, hummus, crisps and crusty brown rolls. ‘There’s plenty to go round,’ she reassures him. ‘What is it? What’s going on?’ she asks, when neither of us says a word.
I confess.
‘The Venetian one?’ she asks, pain in her voice. I promise Mari I will pay her back. Quite what with, who knows, but I don’t tell her that. I tell her again how sorry I am when she asks to see the broken pieces.
As we’re finishing lunch, Guy walks over to the bust of a Dutchman, kneels down and looks him in the eye. ‘This man seems important,’ he suggests. ‘Someone to be reckoned with.’
‘He’s got a great nose, hasn’t he?’ I say.
‘If you look closely at the detail on his coat too,’ Mari adds, ‘you can see he’s someone rich and powerful. Oh, and this is fascinating. See this.’ She crouches down next to Guy and points to the hole on the left side of the bust, where his left arm should have been.
‘It’s broken,’ Guy says.
‘You’re just like Gilly,’ she tuts. ‘Of course it’s broken, but this is where his wife should have been, by his side. She’s been hacked off.’
‘I wonder where she’s gone,’ I say.
‘Where did your wife go?’ Guy asks the bust directly. ‘Are you lonely without her?’
‘Maybe she went on a cruise around the world,’ I put forward.
‘Or maybe he proposed and then she took off? Things just didn’t work out,’ Guy replies. Mari and I exchange secret looks. Guy gets up, brushes the dust off his knees. ‘I’ve never been downstairs. Can I take a look?’ he asks.
‘Gilly, show him. I’ll clear up,’ Mari says. I can sense she’s still thinking about the vase.
‘You’ve got a great boss,’ Guy smiles at Mari, trying to cheer her up. ‘It’s no wonder you don’t want to leave, Gilly.’
I lead Guy down the treacherous steps, showing him on the way the crumbling ceiling. ‘Look at this,’ I whisper, touching it, and the plaster flakes off. Mari’s shop is a tumble-down ruin, but at the same time there is something magical about it. It could be the kind of place where I could set up a small table, light some candles and eat a romantic meal, surrounded by beautiful objects. I wonder if Jack would appreciate this. I don’t think so. ‘Mari keeps on saying she’ll get it seen to, repaint it, but she never does,’ I say quietly. ‘Careful here, Guy.’ We manoeuvre our way through the dark room. I know this room so intimately now that I can sense exactly where to place one foot after the other. Guy on the other hand is trying hard not to stumble over everything.
‘Over here,’ I tell him. ‘I want to show you something.’ I find myself offering him my hand to help him through the obstacle course. He takes it. It feels warm in mine.
I let his hand go when we reach a large circular silver light. ‘I’ve learned so much from Mari,’ I explain, able now to describe this light, which was made in the twenties, the design taken I think from the old eighteenth-century circular peasant lights that were mounted against walls and lit by a single candle.
I gesture to one of the old chandeliers, explaining how easy it is to work out if it’s modern because modern glass reflects blue and green. ‘This glass here,’ I say, ‘is foggy, stained by cigar and cigarette smoke. Modern chandeliers don’t have half the character, do they?’ Guy smiles as I talk.
‘Now you can see this is old glass too,’ I say, returning to the silver circular light.
Guy nods. ‘I like it.’
‘I thought you would. I feel terrible about Mari,’ I whisper, his face so close to mine, ‘that vase was one of her favourites.’
‘Accidents happen,’ he insists. ‘It was my fault too.’
As I guide Guy back upstairs, we overhear Mari talking to Bob Chamerette, her glass and metal man. He’s finished restoring some of the items Mari bought at the last fair she attended in France. ‘Look, Gilly!’ she says, in a brighter mood when we reach the ground floor, ‘you remember that old lantern, don’t you? Look what Bob’s done to it!’
Bob is small and stout with a round face and bright ey
es. Whatever the weather, he always wears loose, slightly grubby T-shirts over old jeans. When Mari compliments his work, he rocks back and forth on his feet, his eyes glowing with pride. ‘I’m so glad you like it, Mrs Gordon.’
‘Oh, Bob, call me Mari for heaven’s sake! We’ve worked together for how long now?’ she laughs, adding, ‘It must be at least twelve years.’
Guy gathers his coat, saying he’d better be going. I lead him to the door and step outside with him.
‘Thanks for lunch,’ he says. ‘And I’m sorry if you were worrying about me this morning, I should have called but I had some things to think about.’
‘Is everything all right?’
He nods, but I detect he wants to say something more. ‘About Jack . . .’ he says, clearing his throat.
‘Yes?’
‘I’m not sure about him.’
‘Well, I know you hate his job and . . .’
‘It’s not that. It’s more that I . . .’ Guy glances down to the pavement. ‘How do I put this?’ He looks at me directly now. ‘There’s something about him I don’t trust.’
‘You don’t trust?’
‘I don’t want you to get hurt again.’
‘I’m a big girl, Guy, you said it yourself.’
He looks confused.
‘I overheard you say it to Mari in the park the other day,’ I explain. ‘Listen, I know he behaved like an idiot last night, but there is a lovely side to him.’
‘I’m not sure he’s right for you though.’
‘You’ve only met him once,’ I say defensively. ‘Jack’s helped me through so much, Guy. Honestly, before he moved in I was depressed, I was lonely. You didn’t know me all those months ago, when Ed left. I was a wreck and my friends had to pick up the pieces. Since Jack’s moved in I’ve been happier, so much better.’
‘Well, maybe . . . but . . .’
‘I like his friends, I enjoy his company, he makes me laugh.’
‘He’s not good enough for you!’
I catch Mari watching us from inside. Quickly she looks away and continues to talk to Bob.
‘Guy, you don’t know him,’ I say, lowering my voice as some people steer their way past us.
Monday to Friday Man Page 18