One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Very nice,’ I said instead. He scrumpled up his masterpieces in his hand and gestured towards the living-room door.

  ‘Sloth and lechery. Lechery and sloth.’ He stretched and wound his arms around my middle. ‘Which is my point.’ He nodded. ‘That son of yours, is he likely to be long up there?’

  ‘Depends whether he has any problems with his homework or not. Why?’

  ‘Oh, just wondered. I’ve been scrabbling away at this bit of wall all afternoon and I thought it was high time I had a scrabble at something a little more yielding.’

  He had, in fact, been scrabbling fairly intermittently. And he’d gone off for a quarter of an hour a little while back, because I wouldn’t let him open his Old Holborn tin in the house.

  His hands now found their way under my T-shirt with unnerving speed and accuracy, and I felt a familiar surge of heat diffuse through my stomach. ‘Oh, really?’ I answered, allowing his hands to linger a while and curling my own around his neck. ‘You did, did you?’

  He grinned. ‘Indeed I did.’ He lifted a foot and brought it down speculatively on the pile of wallpaper we had heaped up at the foot of the wall. ‘Something yielding and soft and spreadeagled on some Anaglypta, ideally. Come on,’ he urged, pulling me against him and opening his mouth to kiss me. ‘Let me strip you to your naked brickwork and sugarsoap your nooks. Mmmm?’

  I wriggled free and picked up his scraper for him. ‘Here. Have patience. If we give it another hour or so that son of mine, as you call him, will be tucked up in bed and fast asleep.’

  He looked at me petulantly, and drew me against him again.

  ‘It’s been a long afternoon and you’ve been jiggling about in those slinky jeans of yours like some smoky-eyed siren. What is a man to do?

  ‘ “Now, therefore, while the youthful hue

  Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

  And while thy willing soul transpires

  At every pore with instant fires …”

  ‘Lu,’ he urged, covering my lips with his own as he spoke, ‘I really don’t know if I can wait another hour.’

  I twisted a lock of his hair around my finger. ‘Well, you’ll just have to, I’m afraid. I’ll go and make us another cup of coffee, shall I?’

  He followed me into the kitchen. ‘There’s a thought,’ he said, sidling up behind me and cornering me against the washing-machine. I could feel his pelvis pressing into the small of my back. ‘There’s a thought. How about I just slide up your T-shirt, like so, and then undo your bra - like so - and—’

  Excited but a little unsettled by his persistence, I prised his hands from my breasts and tugged my T-shirt down again. ‘Stefan! Stop that! Leo might come in.’

  He was breathing hard. He was hard. He pressed himself even more firmly against me. ‘No, he won’t,’ he whispered into my ear. ‘He’s doing his homework. You said so.’

  I swivelled around to face him. ‘Which is no guarantee he won’t come down here wanting to know how to spell Merthyr Tydfil, I can assure you. So put me down, will you, and let’s have that cup of coffee.’

  ‘I don’t want coffee. I want to do some homework. I want to extend my carnal knowledge. I want to pop you up on to that work surface and peel off those jeans and—’

  ‘Come on. You’re being silly.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Because we can’t make love in the middle of my kitchen. Not right now. Got it?’

  ‘Yes, we can.’

  ‘No, we can’t.’

  ‘Yes, we can. And what’s more, Lucienne, my lovely lady, you will enjoy it hugely. Look,’ he took hold of one of my hands and steered it towards the front of his jeans, ‘I need to make love to you now. I really do. Here. Now. Right here. Right now.’ He was fiddling feverishly with the button on my jeans now. ‘Come on, live dangerously, why don’t you?’

  How I wanted to be able to live dangerously for once. There was a moment - a tiny moment - when the logistics of our situation seemed suddenly, enticingly, exhilaratingly compelling. That being pinioned against the Formica in a shuddering, spontaneous explosion of passion was the best, indeed the only, way to bring this situation to its natural conclusion. I was breathing hard also. I was scarily randy. Stefan’s ardour, which had thus far made speedy progress - my jeans were undone now and he was yanking them off me - was pricking at my few remaining shreds of sanity. And, before too long, were I not to resist his advances, something would be pricking at my knickers as well.

  But it was only a moment. There was, in that instant, another kind of pricking. The pricking of a nerve-janglingly shrill maternal conscience. That would not, it assured me, be able to stomach or countenance the picture of me, jeans awry, legs akimbo, jammed up against the toaster in red-faced abandon, while Stefan’s smooth little bottom pumped me into the wall. And then Leo walking in. Oh no oh no oh no oh no.

  ‘No, Stefan!’

  ‘Oh, yes! Yes, yes!’

  ‘I said no!’

  ‘You meant yes!’

  ‘I meant no!’

  ‘No, you didn’t!’

  ‘I did!’

  ‘No, you didn’t!’

  Punctuated, as these breathy utterances were, with a frazzled and inelegant ballet performed between my (frustratingly, increasingly irresolute) hands and Stefan’s (steadfastly resolute) willy, it was odds on that, before long, a climax would loom. And I was not having that, for him, me or the toaster, however many poems he panted in my ear.

  ‘God, it’s Leo!’ I hissed.

  It was a lie, of course. And it worked like a charm.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I breathed, moments later, my modesty whipped safely back inside my clothing and my frenzy of arousal slapped back firmly into place, ‘but I thought I could hear him coming down the stairs. Look—’ Stefan had turned away. He seemed to be having some difficulty with his flies. ‘This is just way, way too stressful for me. But,’ I stepped away from the cupboard front and slipped my arms around his middle, ‘I am now almost beside myself. Truly. So let’s get finished in the other room, and I’ll get Leo into bed, and then you can make love to me any which way you want to. On my worktop, under the stairs, draped over the occasional table, whatever. Indeed,’ I kissed the back of his neck, ‘I shall demand that you do.’

  Which was quite a forward speech for a quiet girl like me, I can tell you, so it made his response altogether less than welcome.

  ‘We’ll see,’ he said, shrugging me off him. ‘We’ll see.’

  Monday 14 May

  I don’t like Mondays. Actually, that’s not strictly true. I do like Mondays - I certainly like them much more now than I used to, at any rate. But I don’t like this Monday. I hate this Monday.

  In the end, Stefan didn’t stay long enough to ravish me, because Leo did indeed need some help with his homework - ostensibly only a handwriting exercise, but in reality, via grunts, denials, shouts, tears and eventual conciliatory hugs, also the draft cover design and introduction for the project on Antarctica he was supposed to have started a week back. By the time he had been properly dispatched to bed, Stefan (astonishingly, given his earlier work-rate) had finished the last of the stripping and was standing in the hall, putting on his jacket. He had got to get back before nine, he said, as he had a couple of students dropping off portfolios or something. He hadn’t mentioned it before, and I seriously doubted its authenticity, but as my repertoire of seductive behaviours did not extend to a bold and unsolicited shedding of either my clothing or inhibitions (standing, as I was, holding Leo’s dirty socks and pants), I had little with which to hold him except my disappointed and wide-eyed blinking. And it failed. Utterly. He had evidently been telling the truth earlier, then. He kissed me goodbye, but with little enthusiasm. It seemed I had missed my moment.

  ‘See you at class on Tuesday, then?’ I asked forlornly, as he straddled his bike.

  He pedalled up the drive and turned into the road. ‘Expect so,’ he threw over his shoulder.

  So here I am at work, and
it is Monday, and it is drizzling, and I feel like the pits, and I look like the pits, and there is a postcard on my desk. It is a postcard of Cardiff Bay by night: lights twinkling gaily, barrage resplendent, landmark buildings proud and clawing the skyline. I turn it over. It says, simply, Sorry. And then, underneath, in a scrawl at the bottom: God, I could kill for a fag!

  Yes, OK, I know. I know. I know I shouldn’t have. And I know it was silly of me even to think it. But I really had thought Stefan had sent it. I don’t know why I should have thought this. This is Monday, that was Sunday. Post doesn’t happen that fast. And it was only for a moment. A tiny fragment of a moment. But enough of a moment for my heart to do such a joyful little leap and a cartwheel. But it was closely followed by another moment, this one so jam-packed with horrible recollections and feelings that it felt like the best part of a month. I have got things all wrong. I have displeased him hugely. What a horrible start to the day.

  ‘There’s lovely,’ remarks Iona, who has obviously recognized the writing. ‘I saw it when I came in. He’s not so bad, really, our Joe, is he? He can be very thoughtful when he puts his mind to it. Um. Er. What’s … err … he apologizing for?’

  Oh, I really, really don’t want to talk about Joe. ‘Nothing terribly dramatic,’ I tell her. Her brows twitch a little. ‘No. Really.’

  I tell her about what had happened at the hospital (she isn’t in the office on Fridays) and reassure her that Joe is doing fine. Then I pop the postcard into my desk drawer and get back to the job I suspect I will be spending the day on: feeling bloody miserable and fretting about Stefan.

  The rest of the day was spent on the laborious translation into French of various parts and assemblages, topped off by a call from the lizardly Jean Paul, who wanted to discuss the specifications of some new power system and to let me know the date of some big dinner in June. Even down the phone he made my skin prickle.

  ‘I love listening to you speaking in French,’ smiled Iona, once I’d put down the phone. She obviously hadn’t quite caught the thrust of my tone. ‘It has such a lovely lilting ring to it. It must be lovely to be able to speak another language. And useful too.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. The only use it’s ever been to me has been to chain me to a frustrating and un-fulfilling job for the last fourteen years.’

  Ah, but it must be nice. Being bilingual, like. I would have loved to learn a language. To travel.’

  Iona, I knew, came from Carmarthen, and was a fluent Welsh speaker. ‘You are bilingual,’ I told her.

  She snorted. ‘No, lovely. I mean a proper language.’

  ‘Welsh is a proper language.’

  ‘And about as much use as a chocolate teapot. Nick - our lad - went to Welsh school, you know. Complete waste of time. We had hoped he might make some use of it. Join the BBC down at Llandaff or something - he’s a bright lad and they like native speakers for the telly - but he didn’t, of course. He went into public relations. He works for an international charity.’

  ‘There we are, then. It must come in useful sometimes, I’m sure.’

  ‘Not really. He’s just moved to Hemel Hempstead, lovely. Bought a house with his boyfriend.’ She looked crestfallen.

  ‘Oh.’

  Just as I was leaving Joe called. ‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to drag you up to the hospital or anything. I’m already home. I got a cab. But I’ll be needing a lift in tomorrow. That OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said. ‘How are you? Is everything OK now?’

  ‘Well, they scanned it this morning and made confident-sounding noises about it, so, yes, I suppose so. Bit of a bitch to be back at square one, though. Still, it was entirely my own fault, so I shan’t bang on about it. Eightish OK?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said again. ‘Oh, by the way, you know I mentioned about that TV makeover thing? Roomaround? I forgot to mention on Thursday but they’re planning to film it this week so I’ll be needing to take Wednesday and Thursday off. I know it’s short notice, but is that going to be OK? The brochure translations are all up to date, and I can finish off the parts catalogue tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m sure we’ll manage.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You sound like you’re really looking forward to it, Lu. I don’t think. Everything OK?’

  Was it really that obvious? ‘Yes, fine,’ I said again.

  I was just heading out when a man was heading in with a bouquet of lilies. ‘L. Fisher?’ he asked. ‘Glad I caught you. Late order. Enjoy!’ And with that, he was back off down the stairs.

  Flowers. Again. I took a look at the message. It said, You’re a star. Not from Stefan, then. No.

  12

  Tuesday 15 May

  Another grey day. Joe has been out for most of it as there has been a minor conflagration in the basement of the law courts, which he’s been busy sorting out with one of his engineers. Iona, currently, is cleaning the computer. She has been sent a trial pack of some specialist brushes that attach to a miniature vacuum-cleaner, which she has been applying with vigour to much of the office electrical equipment. I have spent much of my own dreary boiler-drenched doldrums hoping Stefan will telephone and recite me some poetry, but even as I’m thinking this I know it won’t happen. He teaches undergraduates all day on Tuesdays. And he doesn’t have a mobile because of microwave rays.

  Or whatever. Joe is back in at four, a little stressed, a little grubby, and understandably anxious that Cardiff s penitents are not incinerated prior to their cases being called. I remember to thank him for the flowers, which I’ve arranged in the office, and he tells me my timing is absolutely perfect. He needs to replace some pivotal knob or flange or rivet or other, so could I please, pretty please, drive him out to his parts store?

  ‘That’s OK,’ I tell him. ‘But I absolutely have to be away by quarter to six. My class.’

  ‘Class?’ he asks, poking a pencil up his new plaster. It is covered in a layer of mesh, as protection. In shocking pink, because he promised Angharad he would. ‘Oh, yes,’ he says. ‘Your painting class.’

  I try to discern an element of sarcasm in his tone, but I don’t think there is one. Even so, I still feel instantly rattled. We don’t paint. It’s not a painting class - it’s a learning-to-understand-painting class. And painters - artists. Understanding artists … but I don’t bother. I don’t think he’d know the difference anyway. And in any case, to be honest, I think it’s probably just me. I spend so much time gazing in awe at great painters, yet I’m not altogether sure what I hope to achieve. All it makes me feel is useless. As if anything I might attempt will be risible. I’ve not finished anything since I started these classes. Not a single picture. God, it’s been weeks since I’ve even got out my paints. Is that what it’s supposed to be like? Is that what I’m supposed to feel? I’ve learnt so much about other artists - truly great artists - but what on earth is that going to qualify me to do? So why do I go? Why do I bother? Maybe he’s right. Maybe I should be at a painting class. Maybe I should just be sitting at home painting. Would that make more sense? Oh, he makes me so mad.

  He puts down the pencil and riffles through his Filofax.

  ‘What time does it finish?’

  ‘Seven.’

  ‘Actually, that’ll suit me even better,’ he replies. ‘It’ll be getting on for that before I’m finished at the courts. I’ll walk over and meet you and you can drop me on your way home. Whereabouts will you be? Somewhere on Park Place?’

  I shake my head. ‘No. We’re having a lecture in the museum.’

  ‘Even better. I’ll be just across the road. I’ll meet you there about seven, then?’

  ‘That’s OK. But it mustn’t be any later. I’ve got to pick Leo up, remember.’

  I haven’t spoken to Stefan since Sunday evening and we’re a good half-hour into the class before he speaks, in any meaningful sense, to me. But he seems to have got over his huff, at least.

  Stefan has given us a lecture on Monet tonight, about his water-lily phase. Apparently Monet did
eighteen studies of his lily-pond at Giverny, and I’m now sitting in front of one of the three that are owned by the museum in Cardiff, trying to get my head around the essence of his motifs (or something), trying to make notes on his brushwork (or whatever) and trying (mainly, and very, very hard) not to track Stefan’s movements like a sniper. He spends what feels like an age with the pneumatic young Cerys then squats down beside me and peers over my shoulder. I have written nothing. I have drawn nothing. I have done nothing.

  ‘Everything sorted out for tomorrow, then?’ he asks.

  ‘I guess so,’ I say. ‘As sorted as you can be when your home is about to be invaded by Cefn Melin’s answer to the style police.’

  His hand, reassuringly, is moving over my shoulder as I speak, pausing briefly to commune with the base of my ear. ‘Good, good,’ he says, nodding. ‘I thought I’d get over to you early. Bring some stuff round.’

  ‘You could come tonight, if you like,’ I suggest, suddenly hopeful. ‘I could come down and pick you up, maybe. If it would make things any easier.’ But his head has started shaking before I can even finish the sentence.

  ‘No, no,’ he replies, rising, and patting me on the head with his clipboard. ‘No need, really. And I’ve got things to do tonight. Just as easy to make an early start.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I say lightly, trying to swallow my disappointment and wondering what kind of activity constitutes ‘things’. ‘It’s up to you,’ I add. ‘It was only a thought.’

  Towards the end of the lesson, I notice that Joe is already in the museum, strolling up and down and pretending to look at paintings, but in reality, I suspect, eavesdropping on Stefan. Then I see them deep in conversation as I go down to fetch my bag and coat. They are standing in front of an abstract by John Hoyland. Stefan is pointing. Joe is nodding. By the time I’ve been down to the cloakroom and returned, Joe is alone, and now looking at the painting opposite. It’s a recent work, by a Welsh artist called Kevin Sinnott, an exuberant oil, full of light and colour, in which two running figures are set against the backdrop of the apex of two steep valley streets. I know it well.