I thought she’d be pleased to hear about Brian, but she actually looked a bit jumpy. ‘Take care not to marry on the rebound, dear,’ she said sombrely.
I never expected her to take such interest in my personal life. ‘Oh, Brian and I would discuss things in great detail before we did anything like that,’ I reassured her.
‘So you’ve discussed marriage?’ She leaned forward and almost spilt her tea.
I began to wonder whether Greta secretly fancied me. What else could account for her unnatural interest in the men in my life, or the lack of them?
The truth about Brian Mulligan is that I met him at a gallery opening and we got talking and I let him fetch me a glass of wine. He was tall and well built and had a broad, handsome face that I didn’t find particularly attractive, but he seemed pleasant enough, so we went out for a pizza afterwards. I don’t really remember what we talked about. A few days later we went to a film and I let him kiss me outside the door of my cottage; it was a soft, passionless kiss that slid off me as soon as I got indoors. After that we went on a Sunday-afternoon drive and had tea in a nice café and walked a bit in the countryside. Then, some days later, we went out for a slap-up Italian dinner and Brian brought me back to his flat – a very tidy, high-tech place – and we slept together. Brian seemed to enjoy it, but I was distracted by the tightly patterned wallpaper.
A few days later Brian ‘popped by’, just like Diarmuid used to, and I told him I didn’t think we should date any more because I was trying to get over the ending of my marriage. He was naturally surprised that I hadn’t mentioned this marriage earlier, but he didn’t seem particularly disappointed, though I sensed he regarded the announcement as mildly inconvenient: he would now have to find someone else, which he seemed to regard as a chore. I watched his departing car with considerable relief and luxuriated in a wonderfully single evening – a long bath, a high-quality convenience dinner, and rubbish telly watched in bed in wonderfully cosy, unflattering clothes. I didn’t eat one biscuit.
April calls more often these days. The whole family knows about Al now; apparently the rumour spread discreetly but rapidly at Marie’s party, just like Mum must have known it would. April returned to San Francisco with a broad smile on her face and a large Waterford crystal bowl in her hand luggage.
‘So have you found someone else yet?’ she often asks, in her perky Californian way.
‘Yes, Mel Sinclair will be moving in any day now,’ I reply. ‘I may need to construct a secret entrance for him because of the paparazzi.’
‘Aw, come on, Sally,’ she protests.
‘Look, I like being single,’ I tell her. And in many ways that’s true. My days are full and I’m not unhappy, and at long last I have sufficient storage space in my kitchen. I gave in to Diarmuid about the cabinet eventually. He kept ringing and asking me if I was really sure I didn’t want it, and one day I said I did, just to shut him up. I told him to come on a day when I knew I would be out, learning about curries and spices from some of the people Erika and I teach English to.
I can no longer lump them all together and call them ‘Erika’s refugees’. They have names now, and stories, and I like some of them more than others. They make me forget the things I feel I should feel sad about; they make me remember that, in the grand scheme of things, I have a great deal to be grateful for. And some of them are excellent cooks. Every so often The Sunday Lunch allows me to write articles about ethnic cuisine, and my students have been providing the recipes. We try them out in a small kitchen down the corridor from the hall where we hold the English classes. I have eaten fruits and vegetables I didn’t know existed, and types of meat and grains I would never have considered. When we try out a recipe we cook enough for the whole class, so sometimes our English classes are, basically, large and somewhat boisterous dinner parties. Erika brings along some wine and fruit juice, and people end up talking loudly and opinionatedly about all sorts of matters, with varying levels of expertise. Occasionally there are tears, but there is also plenty of laughter. In the past, the mixed nature of these gatherings would have distressed me – though I claimed to value honesty, I would have felt disappointed by the sobs amidst the smiles – but now it seems to me that this is entirely normal, given the circumstances. And it is also entirely normal that we often stray onto less serious topics.
It was at one of these dinners that Erika announced that she was pregnant with Lionel’s baby. I should have known it. Her cats have a maternal look to them these days. They sell far better than they used to, because of Lionel’s marketing. She now works part-time at International Holdings. She plans to leave ‘any day now’, but she’s staying on ‘for a little while longer’ because of the cream puffs at tea break and the wisdom of their hour-and-a-quarter lunchtime; those extra fifteen minutes make all the difference, she says. Actually I think she’s grown quite fond of the place and its numerous eccentricities – which, of course, include her own.
Once Erika shared her joyous news, I felt I had to tell everyone about Nathaniel. I had that feeling again, that we were all in a truth club we didn’t even know we’d joined. I said I loved a man who didn’t love me but who was a wonderful friend, and I added that it was fine because I had completely accepted the situation and had loads of other interests. Everyone was very moved by this announcement, including Katya, who asked me if what I said was really true. ‘Is it true in your heart, Sally?’ she kept persisting. After all, Sergei had given her very little encouragement, apart from the occasional fried tomato, but somehow she had known he cared for her – and she was right. These days he sometimes wants to give her his entire breakfast.
‘I haven’t asked my heart about Nathaniel, because he’s already answered the question for me,’ I told her. ‘He isn’t even in the country any more.’
‘The oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow,’ Erika commented, and I almost fell off my chair, because she had never been able to get that quote right before. I think she just said it to show off, because it was entirely irrelevant; after all, neither of the trees had emigrated. It seems that Fiona has given her a copy of The Prophet, so she can check the wording of quotations any time she wants.
Fiona is now back at her job, and Erika and I still love her, even though we should loathe her. Sometimes we try to feel sorry for her because she works in software, only she loves software – and naturally she has managed to negotiate flexible hours and occasionally works at home, so that she can have her coffee breaks with Milly gurgling on her lap. Of course, she frequently complains about being tired and not having enough time to herself and missing things like going to the cinema and lie-ins and long baths. She also looks extremely happy, if a little less well groomed than she used to be; I believe she hasn’t had her hair professionally styled for at least a month, and the more casual look actually suits her. She looks more beautiful than ever.
I’m glad Erika and Fiona have found love – or, in Fiona’s case, managed to keep it. I don’t tell them I have given up any significant dreams of finding it myself. What people don’t seem to understand is that it’s quite bracing not having a romance, or indeed a partial marriage, to bother about. Love is such a complicated business, and I have so many other passionate interests that I’m not sure I could fit a man into my life at the moment. Gospel singing with Erika, for example, takes up many a Sunday morning; we’ve found this small church that has a great dramatic choir. A number of the singers are black, and the whole thing is wonderfully soulful and uplifting. I also often go to the stables to ride Blossom, and I even played one game of tennis a few weeks ago.
Everyone has been a bit different since Marie’s party. Mum and Dad, for example, are going to have their lawn back. They say it’s to cheer up Marie, who is somewhat vigilant with us all these days; it wouldn’t surprise her if Dad turned out to be a transvestite and April a lesbian. (She is also the only one of my relatives who has pestered me for details about Diarmuid’s mice. She seemed to think he had a mouse fetis
h; heaven knows what she thought he might be doing with them.) But I think Mum and Dad actually wanted the lawn themselves. They wanted the rhythm of it, the requirements. So now Mum sometimes goes off to the garden centre and comes back with unusual shrubs, which she and Dad discuss in the kitchen over coffee. Sometimes they have heated arguments about the shrubs, actually, but I suppose that’s marriage for you. Sometimes Dad storms out of the house, but he comes back later and they eat dinner and watch telly snuggled up on the sofa.
And I even let Diarmuid mend my music box. I also told him I had flung it at the floor. He didn’t seem that surprised. I don’t know quite what to do with the music box now. Sometimes I put it in a cupboard and think I’ll give it away; and sometimes I take it out and look at it and wonder if I should fling it at the floor again, but I don’t. Once I even got it to play its tinkling, tinny tune. As the girl in her flouncy pink dress turned round daintily, I found I couldn’t hate her. Her young, hopeful face seemed to have an innocence about it that I hadn’t noticed before. Even so, she may end up in Help the Aged along with my wedding ring. My wedding dress went to Oxfam.
Since we sold the house, Diarmuid and I don’t have much reason to talk to each other. Very occasionally he phones, and I tell him I’m busy and won’t be able to talk for long. ‘How’s Charlene?’ I say pointedly, half hoping he’ll say she’s run off with an Italian waiter, but it seems that she hasn’t. He isn’t insensitive enough to add that they are very happy, but he doesn’t have to; I can hear it in his voice. Sometimes, for moments, I find myself forgetting all the stupid things we did to each other; but when he’s gone I feel a sense of relief – and not just because the phone call is over. I’m relieved that he’s happy. He is no longer the ‘poor Diarmuid’ who provoked such guilt. He is what he should have always been to me: a friend. My Tool-Belt Man. The nice guy someone else should marry.
‘How is dear Diarmuid?’ Aggie occasionally asks. Her mind sometimes wanders these days. On some visits she thinks I’m DeeDee, and on other days she thinks I’m her mother. There are moments when she thinks she is young again and talks about dances and dresses and walks in the mountains. In a way it’s OK. I’ve got used to it. It’s as if an old woman can get young again any time she chooses.
Sometimes Aggie mentions men, young men, who make her eyes grow bright. And one day she said suddenly, ‘I should have married one of them, dear, not Joseph. Not after what he did to dear DeeDee.’
‘But you loved him,’ I said, even though I agreed with her.
We didn’t talk about it after that. I’ve begun to understand that knowing when to stay silent is a powerful kindness. It’s not always a good thing to push someone into an honesty they may not be able to bear. We sometimes need our white lies and our evasions, our fibs and tender deceits. And it seems to me that the facts are often only part of the story, anyway. There are so many ways of seeing things; so many ways of being in this weird, wondrous world.
One thing I know, though, is that a lot of us get caught up in dreams that aren’t our own. We are sold them expertly, hungrily, by those who need us to believe them. We are asked to enter a trance where a new car or sofa or hot-shot job will bring us happiness. We are asked to believe that some people we have never met are our enemies and others are our friends. More than ever, it seems a time for questions, because sometimes they are so much wiser than our answers. So these days, when I feel I know the truth about something, I make space for doubt; I make space for humility. I ask myself if this is just another story I am telling myself, or being told.
Aggie is happier these days. DeeDee comes over about once a month; it’s as if they’re trying to make up for lost time. Now Aggie wants to meet Craig. In fact, we all want to meet Craig. Mum says she’ll hold a dinner party if he’ll attend it, and it looks like he wants to, so there is already much talk of starters and main courses and Marie is wondering if she should make her lemon meringue pie. They want DeeDee to sing her songs from the shows, since she didn’t get around to it at Marie’s party. I hope to God she sings better than Erika. (Although Erika is actually learning how to play the guitar, from a book called Guitar Playing Made Simple. Lionel gave it to her, probably after a number of evenings of tuneless serenading. I admire his courage.)
DeeDee phones me regularly, and she’s invited me to spend part of the summer helping her to restore the old walled garden in her Tuscan villa. She wants me to see the olive groves and the orange trees and walk on that dry, wise, sun-baked earth. I like the idea of it. I feel the need to fetch stones and place them carefully in gaps in the old walls, to tend neglected plants, to help things grow and blossom. Afterwards DeeDee and I will sit on the large veranda, sipping wine from the local vineyard. It would be nice to sit in the sun like a lizard, letting it soak into me. I could scour the local shops for tips about Tuscan interior decoration – and, anyway, it’s high time I flirted with a dangerously dark-eyed, pert-bottomed Italian waiter.
‘Have you seen Nathaniel, dear?’ DeeDee keeps asking when she phones.
‘No, I’ve told you he’s in London,’ I reply.
‘Yes, I know, but… but doesn’t he come over on visits?’ she enquires. ‘He said he was going to when I saw him a while ago.’
‘He’s got a new life now,’ I tell her. But what I’m thinking is that he doesn’t seem to miss us. He never really belonged here; he was like a beautiful bird that landed for a while, and then just flew away. But I’m glad I met him. I know he sometimes finds life just as strange as I do. I know we share some of the same questions, and that makes me feel less alone and odd. Sometimes just the thought of him makes me smile – his banged-up old car, his crazy exaggerations, that naughty, bright grin of his. His lightness. His wild, playful strength.
Erika says I should go over to London to see him and bring some of her wildflower liqueur with me.
‘But I don’t even really miss him any more,’ I told her last time we spoke. ‘I’ve got a new love now.’
‘Look, forget about Mel Sinclair,’ she said bossily.
‘Oh, not Mel,’ I replied. ‘Sammy, the young fellow in the delicatessen who gives me extra cheese and huge handfuls of watercress. I don’t think he even weighs the hummus.’
I wasn’t lying about this. Sammy is an extremely handsome young man with a wild, rebellious look and a passionate glow in his eyes. His fingers look beautifully long and sensuous, particularly when they are plunging into a bowl of olives. I flirt with him and he flirts with me. If he called by for tea and biscuits, I don’t think Erika’s wildflower liqueur would be needed.
‘You can borrow my camper van and run off with Nathaniel for the weekend,’ Erika coaxed. She now actually owns a camper van. Lionel gave it to her when she told him about her dreams of travelling around Europe, though so far they’ve only used it for a trip to the stretch of strand across the road from my cottage. They watched the sunrise and the sunset and slept to the sound of the ocean. And they were reassured by the knowledge that, if the thing wouldn’t move in the morning, they could curl up on my sofa and ring a taxi. This is because Erika’s camper van is extremely old; Lionel couldn’t afford a new one. But Erika says it has a lovely friendly feel to it and second-hand camper vans have much more character than new ones.
So now I’m walking beside the waves with Fred and wondering if Sammy would enjoy a camper-van weekend with me. I doubt we’d have much to talk about – he’s obsessed with football – but he’d be an ideal toy boy. And he’d probably be able to bring along quite a few tasty tidbits. He must get discounts.
As I’m thinking this, the seagulls are calling and the wind is blowing mightily, and it looks like it might rain, which is not unusual. ‘Fred,’ I call. ‘Come here. It’s time to go home.’
He doesn’t seem to hear me.
‘Come on, Fred! Food!’
That usually gets him to come back straight away, but this time he runs ahead. He is running towards a man in the distance.
‘Come back, Fred!’ I sho
ut, as the man draws nearer. I watch the lanky strides, the mixture of looseness and purpose as he walks. Even from here I can see there is something different about him – a lightness; an intensity.
I squint my eyes against the flecks of seawater. And then I stand stock-still. It’s Nathaniel, and he’s seen me. In a few seconds he will be by my side.
Chapter Forty-Six
He’s wearing jeans and a thick woollen jumper, which has a hole in the left elbow. ‘Greta told me I’d find you here.’ He is out of breath. He must have been walking very quickly.
‘Oh.’ I just look at him. His hair is shorter and he seems taller somehow, and thinner and sadder. That’s what I’ve always known about Nathaniel – that part of him is sad, despite the gleeful smiles and laughter. And I suppose he sees the same thing in me. There are some people you just can’t hide from.
‘What… what are you doing here?’ I stutter.
‘Looking for you – and Fred, of course.’ Fred is jumping up and down as though he’s on a trampoline. Nathaniel bends down and Fred licks his hands.
‘Hi, sweet thing,’ Nathaniel says, caressing Fred’s long untidy ears. ‘So you missed me, huh?’
‘Yes, he did miss you.’ I try not to say it too reproachfully. ‘In fact, he missed you a lot.’
‘I’m sorry.’ Nathaniel gazes at me, and I see that bruised light in his eyes that always goes straight to my heart.
‘He tried to bury my keys the other day.’
‘You’re a delinquent, Fred,’ Nathaniel laughs. ‘What on earth are we going to do with you?’
I stare out to sea. Why did he have to turn up just when I was getting used to him not being here?
The Truth Club Page 41