Going Too Far

by Catherine Alliott

  ‘Eu, helleu, Rocket Productions?’

  ‘Yes, could I speak to Sam Weston, please?’

  ‘Aim afraid he’s not in the office today, he’s aight shooting.’

  ‘Oh! Where’s he shooting? Can you give me the number?’

  ‘Aim afraid Mr Weston doesn’t like to be disturbed on a shoot.’

  ‘I’m sure he won’t mind under the circumstances,’ I purred sweetly. ‘We’re making a film together. Could you put me through to his office, please? I’ll speak to his assistant.’

  ‘Jarst one moment,’ she said icily.

  There were a few clicks and gurgles, then another girl answered.

  ‘Production?’

  ‘Hello,’ I said briskly, ‘look, sorry to bother you, but it’s imperative I get hold of Sam Weston right away, I’m making a war-torn documentary about the Bosnian Kurds and I need to discuss the rushes with him immediately. Could you get his telephone number for me, please, it’s rather urgent. My name’s Kate Adie, by the way.’

  There was a pause. ‘Polly?’

  ‘Pippa! Oh, Pippa, it’s you, I didn’t recognize you, oh, thank goodness. Listen, I must speak to Sam, where is he?’

  ‘Sam’s on location at the moment.’ She sounded hostile, even more hostile than the receptionist, in fact. Crikey. I frowned, then suddenly remembered.

  ‘Oh gosh, Pippa, I’m so sorry!’ I gasped. ‘I’m so sorry about what I said in the restaurant about you and Josh, but you see I was incredibly drunk! It was stupid and – and horrid, I know that, but, Pippa, I was out of my tree, and so many awful things have happened to me since then that I just completely forgot to ring and apologize, please forgive me, please!’

  ‘It was totally out of order, I’ve never been so embarrassed in all my life.’ Her voice was icy.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know,’ I wailed, ‘but it’ll never happen again, honestly, please forgive me, Pipps, please?’

  There was a pause, and then a sigh. ‘You really are a dickhead, aren’t you, Polly?’

  She forgave me. ‘Oh thank you, thank you! And you’re right, I am a dickhead, I really am, and you’re so sweet, so –’

  ‘Oh, all right. Spare me the effusive gushing, just think next time, OK?’

  ‘OK, OK!’ I agreed wholeheartedly. ‘And thank you so –’

  ‘Shut up, Polly.’

  ‘Right, right.’ I cowered. ‘Was Josh, um, furious?’

  ‘Livid. He got in his car and raced off without me. I tried to follow in a taxi but I lost him. I don’t know where he went but it wasn’t home. I sat outside his house for ages waiting for his car to draw up, but he never appeared.’

  ‘Oh, Pipps, I’m so sorry,’ I said in a small voice.

  She sighed. ‘Well, actually, as it turned out it wasn’t so terrible. When I got into work everyone said they couldn’t understand what the fuss was all about because they all knew anyway. It doesn’t make things any easier but I suppose at least we can be a bit more open about things here; I don’t have to skulk around quite so much.’

  ‘You see! Oh good, I’m so glad! So it’s all turned out rather well then?’

  ‘I wouldn’t go as far as that,’ snapped Pippa tersely. ‘I’m certainly not about to thank you, if that’s what you mean!’

  ‘No, no, of course not,’ I muttered meekly.

  ‘But what happened to you? Did you get your train?’

  I groaned. ‘Oh, Pippa, it’s awful, simply awful, so much has happened I just can’t tell you. Nick hates me – I think he’s leaving me, in fact, and he’s right, I’m a ghastly person, rotten through and through, a liar, a cheat, a –’

  ‘What! He’s leaving you? But he knew all that stuff when he married you, didn’t he? The cheating and the lying and –’

  ‘Oh yes, of course, but he didn’t know I was an adulteress, did he? He didn’t know I’d go to bed with Sam, he didn’t know about my nasty, rotten, conniving –’

  ‘YOU WHAT! You went to bed with Sam? Polly, what the hell’s going on?’

  Out tumbled the whole sordid story, punctuated by much sniffing, sobbing, nose-blowing and pauses to light more cigarettes. When I’d finished there was a silence at the other end.

  ‘Pippa? Are you still there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m still here, but I’m practically on the floor. God, you’ve really gone and done it this time, haven’t you?’

  ‘I know, I know!’ I wailed.

  ‘What on earth are you going to do?’

  ‘Well, first of all I’ve got to speak to Sam and find out exactly what happened.’

  ‘I should have thought that was fairly obvious.’

  ‘Well, yes, OK, but – I wondered if he could be persuaded to pretend otherwise.’

  ‘What, to lie?’

  ‘Er, sort of, yes.’

  ‘To Nick? Heavens, Polly, talk about a tangled web and all that. Why don’t you just come clean for once?’

  ‘Oh yes, brilliant,’ I snapped. ‘I came clean yesterday and look where it got me, practically in the divorce courts. No, I’ve got to speak to him, it’s the only way.’

  ‘Well, you’ve got a slight problem; he’s somewhere on the Nile.’

  ‘The Nile! What the hell’s he doing there?’

  ‘Shooting a commercial for Turkish delight. He’ll be back in about two weeks.’

  ‘I can’t wait that long, I could be divorced by then!’

  ‘Well, I’ve got a few telephone numbers, but they’re moving around a lot and it might be quite difficult to trace him.’

  ‘Give them to me,’ I said desperately. ‘I’ll try them all.’

  ‘Cost you a fortune, Polly,’ said Pippa dubiously.

  ‘Oh, what does money matter when my marriage is at stake!’ I cried dramatically.

  I wrote down all the numbers and promised to report back if I had any news. A couple of hours later, when my index finger was numb from punching out twenty-digit numbers and my voice hoarse from shouting at ignorant Egyptian hotel receptionists who couldn’t even speak the Queen’s English for heaven’s sake, I finally put the phone down in despair. I traipsed miserably downstairs, poured myself a large gin and tonic, cut some cucumber slices for my puffy little eyes and trailed back to bed again. It was quite clear that getting hold of Sam was going to be very tricky. I’d tried every hotel between Aswan and Cairo and the answer was always the same. ‘He not due here till next week,’ or, ‘He been, he gone now, he go yesterday.’ Eventually, knocked out by the mother’s ruin and soothed by the cucumber eye patches, I went back to sleep, resolving that in the afternoon, with a rested brain and finger, I’d track him down if it was the last thing I did.

  Unfortunately, as I discovered later, this was not to be. After shrieking at a whole new batch of receptionists and then reporting back to Pippa, it transpired that there’d been a complete change of plan and the entire film crew was now actually on the Nile, on a boat which stopped whenever and wherever the director felt like filming, but with no firm schedule.

  ‘How can he do this to me?’ I screeched to Pippa. ‘I need to speak to him right now!’

  ‘Well, he’ll definitely be in Cairo in a couple of weeks,’ soothed Pippa, ‘no question about it. They’re shooting the pack shot there and that’s where the client’s waiting, complete with pristine box of Turkish delight in his hot little hand. So don’t worry, you’ll get hold of him then. Just for once in your life be patient, Polly, OK?’

  Easy for her to say, I thought gloomily, putting the phone down. It wasn’t her life that was in the balance here, was it?

  The next two weeks were purgatory. Nick worked on the farm but slept and ate at Tim and Sarah’s. I never saw him. I stayed inside and basically took to my bed, just popping down to the kitchen now and then for supplies, which I then squirrelled away in a little store under my bed. I curled up miserably under the duvet, mentally ticked the days off as they went by and generally felt that there was nothing much to live for, let alone get up for. I tried to diet but seem
ed to put on more weight than ever, which might have had something to do with the fact that the only exercise I got was reaching for my cigarettes.

  Apart from smoking a lot, I cried a lot and talked tearfully on the phone to Pippa, who did her best to console me, but who, I could tell, felt that the dice were not exactly loaded in my favour. Sarah, I knew, felt much the same. She crept over to see me every day, feeling horribly divided between Nick and me.

  She’d assured me on her first visit that the whole village knew of the marital tiff and were on tenterhooks, dying to know the outcome – would he come back? Paul, the newsagent, had even opened a book on it. Apparently the odds were against me, but that could have had something to do with the fact that the current story sweeping the village was that I’d got out of my head on Ecstasy at an acid house party and then bonked an entire rugger team.

  As Sarah was one of the few people privy to a conversation with Nick these days, I awaited her daily visits with bated breath. One day, at the beginning of the third week, she crept in as usual at around eleven o’clock. I sat up eagerly, wrapped my distinctly grubby dressing gown around me and peered through the dark glasses which hid my puffy eyes.

  ‘How is he?’ I whispered, before she’d even got a foot through the door. ‘Pining for me yet, d’you think?’

  ‘’Fraid not, Polly,’ she said, a mite too cheerfully for my liking, brushing some ash off the bed cover before she sat down. ‘He was up with the lark this morning and ate a hearty breakfast. Actually he was on quite good form for a change. Of course,’ she added quickly, seeing my face fall, ‘he’s probably faking it, he’s probably eating his heart out, but you know Nick, he’d never show it.’

  I nodded dumbly. ‘Sure.’ I slumped back down on the pillows and stared out of the window.

  Sarah got up and swept some crumbs on to the floor. ‘God, this bed’s disgusting, crumbs and ash and – oh yuck, toenails too! You are a slob, Polly, when did you last change the duvet cover?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I muttered miserably, reaching down beside my bed for the Coco Pops packet and pulling out a handful of cereal. I crunched away gloomily. ‘Last month, I think. Does he mention me, Sarah?’

  ‘Christ,’ she muttered, moving hastily on to a chair. ‘Er, well, not exactly, but then I think that’s pretty significant, don’t you? It’s as if he can’t bear to mention your name in case – well, in case it hurts too much.’

  ‘Or in case he pukes,’ I muttered. ‘What’s in the Le Creuset thing?’ I’d spotted a casserole dish by her feet.

  ‘Oh, I thought you probably weren’t eating properly so I brought you a stew, we had some last night.’

  ‘Stew? On a weekday? Gosh, he’ll never come back if he gets used to your cooking. Give him beans on toast every night like I do. You’re an angel for bringing it, Sarah, but honestly, I’m trying to diet. I’m getting so fat.’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly surprising since you live on Coco Pops – and what’s that aerosol thing you keep squirting in your mouth?’

  ‘Whipped cream,’ I said, giving my tonsils a quick squirt. ‘Easier than going downstairs to get the milk. These are my staples. Sarah, just a little cereal and cream every day. I’m cutting out all the frivolous luxuries like bread and –’

  ‘Fruit and vegetables, yes, I know. It’s no wonder you’re putting on weight – and look at all these empty chocolate boxes!’ She cruelly swept the duvet aside to reveal my secret store.

  ‘They’re not all empty,’ I protested sulkily. ‘Here, have one.’ I pushed a box in her direction.

  ‘No thanks. I know you – if it’s still sitting there it’ll be because it’s marzipan or something disgusting and it’ll have a chunk out of it where you’ve tried it and put it back. Anyway, I thought you hadn’t got out of bed for ages. Where did you get them from?’ She giggled. ‘Secret admirer? Someone who goes in for the distressed-bag-lady look, eh?’

  ‘Very funny, and for your information I did actually get out of bed one day last week. I went into Helston to get my split ends cut.’ I sniffed. ‘I felt so lonely and miserable I just had to have some sort of physical contact, even if it was only with a complete stranger who stroked my hair and snipped the ends off.’ I turned to face the wall. ‘And guess who I ran into as I was coming out of the salon?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Nick,’ I whispered. ‘We practically bumped into each other. He didn’t say a word. I opened my mouth to say hello but I shut it when I saw his eyes. Cold and hard. He just looked straight through me and walked on by without saying anything.’ I pulled my hanky out from under my pillow and snuffled into it. ‘What have I got to live for, Sarah? Just tell me that, eh?’

  Sarah sighed. ‘Look, Polly, he’s bound to be feeling like that at the moment – just give him some time, OK? And you know something?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’d feel much better if you got up and got your act together. You could clear up this pigsty of a room for a start. I mean, look at it!’ She swept her hand around in disgust. ‘You can hardly move for dirty washing and overflowing ashtrays. I’ve never seen so many cigarette butts in one room – and look at all these empty Mr Kipling boxes! I don’t know how you can bear to live like this! And look at that dressing gown you’re still wearing – it’s filthy, why don’t you wash it?’

  ‘Washing machine’s broken,’ I said gloomily.

  ‘Well, get a plumber!’

  I bit my nail. ‘Don’t scold me, Sarah. I’m just not up to it.’

  ‘Take it off and give it to me,’ she sighed. ‘I’ll wash it and give it back to you tomorrow.’

  I dutifully slipped out of it and handed it to her. She took it gingerly and bundled it up by the door ready to take. I huddled under the duvet with nothing on and watched as she began sweeping all the debris into the waste-paper basket, emptying ashtrays and picking up clothes. She stubbed out a couple of cigarette ends smouldering peacefully away in the top of the deodorant spray.

  ‘Apart from anything else you’ll go up in flames if you’re not careful!’ she scolded.

  ‘And who would care?’ I retorted. ‘Who would care if I died right now, certainly not Nick. He hasn’t even bothered to enquire how I am; I could be dead already and he wouldn’t even know about it!’

  Sarah stooped to pick up a mouldy banana skin that was nestling in one of my suede shoes. She straightened up and looked at me rather impatiently.

  ‘If you don’t mind me saying so, Polly, I think you’re taking this self-indulgent bit a mite too far. I mean, no one can actually blame Nick for avoiding you, seeing as you were the one who opted for the extra-marital sex in the first place.’

  ‘Whose side are you on, Sarah?’

  ‘No one’s, but you must admit he’s got a point, and anyway, you wouldn’t want him to come and see you now, would you? Imagine if he walked in and found you in this revolting state.’

  ‘Well, he’s not going to, is he? I mean, let’s face it, Sarah, he’s never going to come back, is he?’ My voice cracked.

  Sarah busied herself grinding out more cigarettes. She didn’t look at me.

  ‘Well, is he?’ I pleaded.

  She sighed. ‘I don’t know. I really don’t, Poll. I think he’s talked to Tim but Tim won’t tell me anything because he thinks it’ll go straight back to you, which it probably would.’

  I was shocked. ‘There’s no probably about it, Sarah, of course it would!’

  ‘All right, all right, of course it would. But you’re right, he’s not going to walk back in just like that. Nick’s got some pretty uncompromising views about the sanctity of marriage.’ She picked up a mug with two inches of solid blue mould at the bottom. ‘Shall I soak this for you?’

  ‘Oh, throw it away,’ I said miserably, ‘it’ll never come off.’

  Sarah ignored this directive and put it in my washbasin, running the hot tap over it. I groaned and bashed my head on the pillow.

  ‘You know, Sarah, everything would be all ri
ght if I could just talk to Sam and find out what happened! I’ve got to speak to him in Cairo, I’ve just got to!’

  ‘And if he says you did sleep together you’re still going to ask him to lie through his teeth?’

  ‘You bet,’ I said grimly, ‘it’s the only way.’

  Sarah sighed and folded her arms. ‘Well, you know my views on that topic. I mean, wouldn’t it be easier to just – well, to just sort of – stick to the truth?’ She had the grace to ask this somewhat hesitantly, knowing how diametrically it went against the grain.

  ‘Oh sure, easier,’ I scoffed, ‘but hopelessly ineffectual, and anyway, sometimes,’ I went on piously, ‘one has to take the hard route in life, however unpleasant it might be. One can’t always take the easy way out, you’ll learn that one day. No, no, this calls for some carefully thought-out subterfuge.’

  She shrugged and threw open a window. ‘Oh well, you know best. Phew, that’s better. God, you can hardly see for smoke in here!’

  ‘Atmosphere,’ I mumbled.

  ‘And what are you doing with these binoculars?’ She picked them up off the windowsill.

  ‘Oh, that’s so I can see Nick when he’s working in the fields. It’s the only time I get to catch a glimpse of him now, and to think, I used to be able to see him every minute of the day!’ My voice rose dramatically and I sniffed into my hanky, poking it up under my dark glasses to dab my eyes.

  Sarah sighed and sat down patiently on the bed beside me. ‘Oh dear, you are in a bad way, aren’t you?’

  I nodded miserably, sniffing wildly. She patted my hand, then looked at her watch. She shook her head.

  ‘Listen, I’m really sorry, Poll, but I must go in a sec. I’ve got a new showjumping pupil arriving at the stables soon. Will you be all right?’

  ‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ I whispered, smiling bravely. ‘Oh, and er – leave the stew if you like, Sarah,’ I added quickly, seeing her tuck it under her arm. ‘You never know, I might feel up to it a bit later on.’

  ‘That’s the spirit,’ she said, putting it on a chest of drawers. ‘It’ll do you good. And just think, Polly, tomorrow you’ll be able to speak to Sam and sort out exactly what happened. Odd the way these film people change their schedules all the time. I thought he was supposed to be in Cairo today?’