I’d been away almost four years by the time I returned from my travels. My arrival in Hong Kong had been a chill, inauspicious start, but it was as I had known that night, thinking about Nathan. Things got better, and from the following morning. In the end I stayed three years there, working on the colony’s English language newspaper. I was in Zamboanga, a paradise at the southern tip of the Philippines, when I picked up Cass’s letter breaking the news about our father’s cancer and that she and Fergie were getting married. ‘Come home as soon as you can,’ she wrote. ‘I need you.’ But to my shame I didn’t. Instead I travelled on for another month, pretending I hadn’t yet got the letter, the only reason I can give being the obvious one that I didn’t want to go home. In the end I arrived with only a week to spare before the wedding, by the miracle of modern travel, in not much more than the space of a day, exchanging a solitary dope-swamped beach for a cold-turkey small-town homecoming. The day after I got back, I sat shivering on the seat opposite the abbey, watching the old green buses dragging up the High Street, listening to the small-town bustle and feeling all this to be more foreign and strange than anything I had experienced on my travels. I felt disjointed, physically and mentally, as though my life was in pieces, none of which fitted together. And that was how it was when I walked up the aisle behind Cass and my father, and when I listened to him making that speech, listened because I couldn’t even raise my head from the table to look at him, standing there so firm and tall, and despite that greyness apparent around his eyes, I felt some terrible pain, some hurt inside that I wanted to push down, to run far away from. At the same time I also felt unreasonably angry and resentful. I wanted to be back lying on a beach somewhere with none of this happening, with no need to care or hurt like this. For all these reasons I drank, heavily, shared a joint too, out back of the hotel, with an accommodating waiter. And for all these reasons, and in this frame of mind, I ended up in bed with Archie.
There’s no sensible answer to why I went to bed with Archie. Just the simplest one. Because he was there. Because that’s what we did then. Because of the way I was feeling.
I went to bed with Archie because I was drunk and I didn’t care about anything that night. In particular I didn’t care whether I went to bed with him or not, and in the end, just by chance, I did. I have a vague recollection of a drunken stagger up the wide balustraded hotel stairs, of some noisy grappling at the door of his room and after that some of the same but this time in the darkened bedroom. That I remember nothing about the sex doesn’t surprise me. Like I said before, in my experience sex is something that doesn’t seem to stay in the memory, particularly sex with people you don’t like, which was the way it was with Archie.
Still Archie professed to enjoy it.
‘Hey, Riley, let me tell you, you do a bloody good—’
‘Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.’
If I had to choose the nadir of my life, I tell you, I’d pick that moment, that scrabbling together of the pieces from the night before, the underwear, the Biba bridesmaid’s dress, the contents of a handbag. And all this under the stern gaze of a grey dawn leaking in through the crack in the hotel curtains.
‘Come back to bed.’
‘No.’ He had reached for me. ‘Leave it.’ I slapped his hand away.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Everything’s the matter.’
‘What?’
‘Everything.’
I was reaching back over my head, trying to pull up the zip of the dress, which had slipped down over my naked shoulders.
‘Allow me.’ His own tone had cooled. Before I could stop him he had thrown back the sheets, revealing his nakedness. The sight of it fuelled my growing unreasonable indecipherable anger.
‘No.’
I concentrated on pushing my feet into the mulberry satin shoes, first so I wouldn’t have to face him, second to try and master the trembling fury.
‘Look. We need to be very clear about something here. This … thing. This whole thing. It was a mistake. I shouldn’t be here. It should never have happened.’
‘Well, well, well …’ He thumped a pillow hard, lifted it and dropped it against the bed head behind him, leant back luxuriously against it, staring at me. He crossed his arms slowly. To me his face was mocking and smirky. ‘Who would believe it? That there we were, last night, having such a good time. Making love—’
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ I advanced on him with the violence of the words. ‘We weren’t making love, Archie. We had sex. We were screwing.’ I was filled with a rush of disgust as I stared at him, the arms still sticklike and boyish, folded over the thin freckled chest. I said, ‘It was nothing. It didn’t mean anything.’ I was at the door by then.
Behind me he said, ‘So what happens now?’
I didn’t even bother to turn. I said, ‘Absolutely nothing happens now, Archie.’ But, of course, I was wrong.
* * *
It was Sophie who said I should tell Archie. Sophie. Surprising me.
‘Why? I don’t need him.’ And I didn’t. She’d already offered, unasked – if I wanted it – to lend me the money.
I was staying with Sophie by then, in Bristol, where she was working on the evening paper. I signed up with her doctor, which made the whole thing easier.
He said, ‘There are some questions, by law, I have to ask you.’
He was in his thirties with the air of a family man about him, not unsympathetic, merely brisk and businesslike as if he’d thought the thing through and knew this was the best way to approach it.
‘Why do you want to terminate this pregnancy?’
‘I’m too young to have a child.’
The answered surprised me as much as it did him and yet it was the truth. His brow furrowed. He looked down at his notes.
‘But you’re twenty-six.’
‘Yes.’
‘That’s the perfect age for a woman to have children.’
‘Not for me.’
I made a better fist of it after that, being aware, taking account of my position.
‘It’s not possible. I’m not long back from abroad. I haven’t even got a job yet …’
‘And the … relationship?’ He’d cleared his throat as if to make a passage for the words.
‘There is … was no relationship.’
‘The father is … ?’
‘Yes. Married. I don’t even know where he is.’
I was surprised at the lies. How easily they came to me. Surprised too that I felt the need to embroider the story.
Words slip and slide, the poet said. Words escape from the grasp, from the box we try to put them into. Like ‘want’, for instance. ‘Want’, defined in the dictionary as ‘to feel a need or longing for, e.g., I want a new hat …’ Only it wasn’t a new hat that I wanted.
‘If it’s what you want,’ Archie said finally, staring down at his fingers.
‘It’s not a case of want. I don’t want it. I don’t want any of this.’ I shouted the words, making the heads of the isolated early evening drinkers scattered around the place jerk up from their newspapers and their glasses. ‘Don’t you understand? I don’t want to be in this situation.’
I’d phoned him at his office in London, taking a small bitter pleasure in his swelling joviality on the phone.
‘Have a drink with you? Well, yes. Of course. You know I’d love to have a drink with you, Riley.’
I took the train up to town, like I was having a day out shopping, then the tube across to the City where we’d arranged to meet in a pub around the corner from his office. At one stop a young woman who looked about my age tried to get on with a buggy, carrier bags full of shopping swinging off each side of it. As she heaved and pushed, the wheels stuck in the floor of the carriage. She looked close to tears as the doors began to close on her. I rose to help but with one last push she was on. She half smiled her thanks at me, sank down into a seat, putting a hand to her forehead, whereupon, as if by magic, the child’s mou
th opened in a wide O and he began to howl. All of this seemed like a sign: that none of this was what I wanted.
I let Archie buy us both a drink in the pub, taking a small sadistic pleasure in his grinning assumption that this was a straightforward social occasion.
‘So,’ he said, settling back into the padded bench, lifting his glass and looking at me over it, ‘to what do I owe this pleasure?’
And I told him.
‘Sophie said I should come,’ I said when I’d finished, and his brow crinkled. He leaned forward and took a sip of his pint, then he leaned back, once to one side, reaching in his pocket for something he didn’t find and then to the other.
‘You weren’t even going to tell me?’
‘No.’
‘Why?’
‘I didn’t think it was any of your business.’
‘Jesus.’ He looked away from me sharply as if to hide the disgust but I caught the expression. I was struck by the way it transformed him, by the way, just for the moment, he didn’t look like the foolish old Archie.
‘It’s not your responsibility.’
‘Right.’
‘It’s all under control. I’m … taking care of everything.’
‘You are?’
‘Yes. I’ve decided.’
‘Well … in that case Sophie was wrong, wasn’t she? Not much point in coming up to see me since it’s all decided.’
The sarcasm in the word caught at something in my throat, something I wasn’t prepared for. I grabbed at my bag, half-rising to my feet, which was when he shot a hand out across the table.
‘Look. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. What can I do?’
‘Nothing. There’s nothing for you to do.’
‘Money?’
‘No. I have it.’
‘I could take you … there … pick you up … look after you …’
‘No. No.’
He reared back at the revulsion in the words.
‘I’m sorry. No. It’s OK. Like I say, everything’s taken care of.’ But now there could be no misunderstanding between us.
‘Look, I know what you think of me …’ He was looking down, staring at his fingers, which were tapping on the table top. I knew that none of the words he’d spoken were the ones he really wanted and I knew what was coming. ‘But … what I mean is … I suppose … there’s … no point … in me asking … if we could talk about this?’
‘No.’ I made sure I answered briskly. I said, ‘I’m sorry. There’s no point. I know what I want. I know what’s best for me.’ I was already getting up, pulling my bag towards me again.
He didn’t look at me, just went on looking down at those tapping fingers.
He said, ‘I’m sure you do, Riley.’
The hospital was a low brick-built affair at the end of a road down by the docks, more like some industrial compound, the home of some plastics firm, than a hospital. I don’t remember much about the twenty-four hours I spent there, but then I don’t believe it should be emblazoned on my memory.
The doctor was Indian, handsome in a sari. She said, ‘I’m sorry but I have to ask you the same questions. It’s not too late to change your mind.’ I said, ‘I won’t change my mind.’ She said, ‘Why do you not want this child?’ and this time the answer came out, without my thinking.
I said, ‘Because the father is a fool. I don’t want to be linked all my life to a fool because I’ve had a child by him.’ And I knew that was the truth of it.
The operation was on a Saturday afternoon, which seems odd now. I woke up around five when they brought me a meal. Grey mashed potato and some nameless meat. It seemed the finest food I had ever tasted, I remember.
Sophie picked me up the following morning. It was a grey day and early, and the streets through which we drove home were dreary and empty. In the flat she said, ‘Are you alright?’ I said, ‘Yes. But I want to sleep.’ I went to her spare room and clambered into bed. By the time she came in with a cup of tea I was fast asleep again.
It was late afternoon when I woke and Sophie was standing over me. She said, ‘Archie’s here,’ and I made a violent movement.
‘I don’t want to see him.’
‘I don’t think he’ll go away,’ she said.
He was looking out of the window, out over the river, when I came in. The suspension bridge was lit up and all the lights of the city were winking.
‘Why are you here?’
At the words he turned sharply. ‘Why do you think I’m here?’ He thumped a fist impotently down at his side. ‘I’ve come to see how you are.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘I wanted to know.’
‘When will you get the message? It’s none of your damn business now, Archie.’
He dropped down on the chair by the window then, pinched two tired fingers on his nose.
‘Riley, I haven’t slept. I’ve just driven a couple of hundred miles.’
‘So what? That’s your fault.’
He turned a tired, pleading face up to me. ‘Couldn’t we just be civilised? Couldn’t you just make me a cup of coffee or something, Riley?’
I don’t believe that anything has tasted as bad as that cup of instant coffee I made that day. I’ve never drunk the stuff since. All these years on I can still taste that thin sickly chemical bitterness, see the granules the way I saw them then, small round gritty pieces floating on the surface.
Archie put a hand to his head as if shielding his eyes from the light beside him.
‘What can I do, Riley?’
‘I’ve told you a dozen times, there’s nothing you can do. Nothing I want you to do.’
But his hand had dropped by now and he was staring at me. ‘I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about me, Riley.’
I remember to my shame now the rush of disgust I felt seeing the tears form in his eyes. I looked away sharply so as not to see them.
‘I’m hurting too, Riley.’
‘I don’t care. I don’t care if you’re hurting.’
‘You don’t?’ He was looking at me wonderingly and there was something else in those damp eyes that might even have been admiration. He shook his head. ‘I’ll give you this. You are something, Riley.’
He bunched his hand into a fist, struck it into the other palm. Then he laid it on his lips in the way someone does when they’re choosing their words when they’re thinking.
‘What do you … want … Riley?’
‘You really want to know?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want – as far as is humanly possible – never to see you again.’
‘That won’t be easy. With our connections.’
‘We’ll manage it.’ I dropped down on to the sofa. Like someone making the arrangements for the annual school fête, I ticked them off on my fingers. ‘When I know you’ll be going to something, I won’t go and you’ll have the decency to do the same.’
‘You don’t think they’ll notice?’ He gave a weak smile, trying to make a joke of it.
‘No. They know I don’t like you.’
‘Oh, right. I forgot.’ A sharp snap of sarcasm entered his voice. ‘That makes it easier.’
For a long moment there was silence between us, then he struck a hand on his knee. He got up slowly from the chair. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘If it’s what you want.’
‘It is.’
At the door he stopped with his back to me. His head was bent as if he was thinking about something. He didn’t turn but his back straightened as if he’d made some sort of decision. ‘There’s something I have to say before I go.’
‘I’m sure there’s no need.’
‘Yes. There is.’ And now he turned in the open doorway. ‘I’m aware of what you think of me. You’ve made that clear enough. You think I’m a clown and maybe you’re right. But I’ll tell you this, beneath it all, right from the start, I knew—’
‘Stop.’ I shouted it at him ‘I don’t want to hear this. How many times do I have to tell you?’ The words
came out like a stream of bile. ‘I don’t care what you think about me. I don’t care what you feel. All I know is you’re trying to make something happen and it isn’t going to happen.’ I was closing the door on him, pushing him out into the corridor as I did so. ‘What you have to understand is that this has all been a horrible mistake. But now it’s over. It’s all been taken care of. It’s finished. The End.’
On the last words I slammed the door, leant back against it, which is how we both stood, I know that now, him with his back against one side of the door, me with my back against the other.
Twenty-five years on, sitting on the wall of the pub car park, taking the air with the raucous sounds of Fergie’s party coming out through the pub window, Archie’s head shook slowly in the darkness.
He said, ‘All I know is I never want to feel as bad as I felt that day, Riley.’
It came as a shock, coming round, on the pub floor with all the faces – Archie, Fergie, Cass, even my mother – staring down at me.
According to Archie, I went down like a tent: ‘Like someone had pulled your pegs out, let down your guy ropes.’
Naturally, being Archie, he was unable to resist boasting about the quick-witted and chivalrous way in which he had acted.
‘Lucky I was there to catch you.’
There were judged to be extenuating circumstances for my fainting, i.e., the room was hot, I hadn’t eaten much. And there was this virus going around (I’d get it a couple of days later). I was not, however, drunk although there were those who wanted to claim it. ‘Tch-tch-tch … really, Adeline.’ And this from the woman I’ve poured into the front seat of my car more times than I care to remember.
In fact I had had only two glasses of wine.
The third was still in my hand as I tried to force myself, struggling against the sinking floor and the dying light, to get across the room to David. I went down still clutching it, which is how Archie caught the lot, all down the front of him.
It was fortuitous, as it turned out. The first thing I saw, regaining consciousness, was the stain, blood red, standing out against the cream of his jacket. It provided a perfect cover for the words that I spoke as I reached out to touch it.
Not Married, Not Bothered Page 26