One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘OK,’ calls someone, and we begin to troop in. ‘Don’t wander out of shot,’ she reminds us.

  When I open my eyes it is to find myself in a room much, much larger than the one I used to have. A pretty room. Apple-fresh. Welcoming. Sunny. A room with mile upon mile of pale strip wood flooring that is softened here and there by big fluffy green rugs. It puts me in mind of an orchard in spring, and had I not something more important to try not to cry about, I’m quite sure my eyes would be pricking.

  6.10 p.m.

  They’ve chosen to do the closing link in my garden rather than Del’s because they’ve already disassembled the gazebos and trestles. Some chairs are brought round from the catering lorry, and expensive champagne is brought forth from a cool box. There’s just one hitch, Sheena tells us. ‘They’ve got a problem with the film and we’re going to have to shoot Kit and Africa’s last link again,’ she explains. ‘Won’t take long,’ she reassures us. ‘Come on, sweeties. Let’s get this done.’

  Someone opens a bottle of champagne anyway, and we cluster in the doorway watching while they rewind the TV clock to half an hour back. The champagne is cold against my dusty throat, and the bubbles go up my nose. I gulp down half a glass. I would like to get drunk.

  ‘There’s lovely,’ says Will.

  ‘Quiet!’ someone barks from behind me.

  ‘Well, Kit,’ says Africa, ‘you’re way over budget as usual. Pleased with yourself?’ He does his faux-guilty shrug. ‘So,’ she says, ‘what are you going to call it?’

  Kit swivels on the sofa and glances at the camera, then the floor then the camera again. ‘I kind of thought - wait for it - “Lucy Gets Laid”!’

  It is funny in its way, I suppose. It is certainly ironic. I have nothing against Kit. I have nothing against Africa. But as this is my absolute last chance to insert anything like a modicum of control on the proceedings (and as I am feeling more and more miserable by the minute) I cough, loudly, and step over the camera cable.

  ‘Look, do you mind if we stop?’ I ask miserably. He looks quizzically at me.

  Manda goes ‘Tsk!’

  ‘Because my name isn’t Lucy! OK?’

  Kit, as it happens, is mortified.

  ‘Why didn’t you say?’ he entreats. ‘I feel awful. Awful. Look, d’you want me to check through the rushes before we go into production? Bit of editing, here and there, and I’m sure we could sort it.’ He’s so apologetic about it that I wish I’d never said anything. And when he tells me that the inspiration for the room came partly from my very own watercolour, which Del got down last week from my loft without my knowing, and which he has put, centre stage, over the fireplace, I have to rush to the loo so he can’t see me snivelling.

  It’s another hour before my house is my own again. Del and Ben have gone back to supervise the striking of camp at their own place - Tia Slater, thankfully, with them - and Stefan is outside straightening the garage. But once I’ve cleared the last of the debris in the kitchen and gone back into the living room to gather up mugs I find that Stefan is in there and, moreover, donning his jacket.

  Again. Oh, hell.

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Are you going?’

  He nods. He has, I noticed, made fast work of exchanging the sweatpants for his jeans. ‘Yeah,’ he confirms. ‘Got to make a move. I’ll leave my bike and my paints, if I may. Tia’s dropping me.’

  I can feel my stomach falling off a ledge somewhere. ‘Tia is? Dropping you where?’

  ‘At my place.’ He doesn’t look at me.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘She wanted to see some of my Abstraction-Creation 2000 studies. And it’s on her way, so—’

  ‘Oh. Right.’

  He pushes his hands into his pockets. ‘She’s got a friend who’s opening a ceramics cafe in Bristol, apparently, and she—’

  ‘What, now? I thought we were going to Del and Ben’s for supper.’

  Now he does look at me, but guardedly, and only briefly. As if he has already decided that looking at me for any length of time might just bring him out in exploding boils. ‘I know,’ he says, gathering his hair into a rubber band and sliding his eyes away again. I can hear a car pulling up outside. He swivels his head round to look out of the window. ‘But, well … now this has come up … Look. I’d better make a move. We’ll talk later, OK?’

  I have trodden so carefully and for so long with Stefan that even though what I most want to do now is tell him what an absolute and utter bastard he is, I seem unable to find words that will take us on to more suitably combatorial zones without my dignity being run down by a loose chariot on the way. He is only, after all, skipping a meal with me for her. Not whipping her off up an aisle. Plus he doesn’t know what I know. And I’m not going to tell him. My dignity is precious to me.

  ‘Right,’ I say. ‘Fine.’ And begin straightening cushions. ‘Fine,’ he says back. Then starts off to the doorway. There’s a voice. But not mine. ‘Stef? Are you coming?’

  ‘OK,’ he calls back. ‘I’ll be there in a moment.’ We’re now twelve feet apart. He walks out. Makes it twenty. And the moment, such as it’s been, is now gone.

  14

  Friday 18 May

  Oh, woe is me. Oh, woe. Oh, woe. Headache, dyspepsia, MSG-induced dehydration, loneliness - oh, such loneliness! Much misery, much regret, such remorse. Plus niggling undercurrent of anxiety and guilt about dreadful, infantile, rampage of carnage that performed on Mark Rothko et bloody al last night. Will go to hell, for certain sure.

  ‘Look,’ says Joe. Quite without realizing, I seem to have picked him up, for he is sitting in the passenger seat and talking at me. Perhaps it’s all true. Perhaps Jag is a pussy. Perhaps Jag will now drive Joe and me into work.

  ‘Look,’ he says again, as he puts on his seat belt, ‘I don’t want to start you off all over again or anything, but can I just say - can I just say - how sorry I am that I upset you on Tuesday? I feel really bad about it. It was a flippant, throwaway, meaningless comment, and if I’d had the slightest idea - the slightest idea - about you and him then I wouldn’t have dreamt of saying what I did. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t have thought it, of course - as you yourself said, I would have carried on thinking it anyway because the guy wound me up like you wouldn’t believe but, as I said, I am very, very sorry. I was completely out of order and you were quite right to berate me for it - who am I to venture opinions about him? I’m sure he’s a very nice guy, once you get to know him, and, well - I hope I didn’t upset you so much that you are going to remain in this state of icy aloofness for the rest of the day. I’m not very good with moods. I don’t do moods, Lu. I’ve been at the receiving end of enough moods to last me a lifetime. So I hope we can leave it at that. Can we leave it at that? Yes? So. How did the TV thing go?’

  My hands move to turn the key in the ignition and the car somehow moves itself into the road. My mouth then opens and a voice issues forth: ‘You’re right. He’s a wanker,’ it says.

  I cried a fair bit on Thursday night, of course. Bastard.

  After they’d gone, I sat in my new through-lounge and wept hot snotty tears all over a small green cushion. Which made me feel at least sufficiently rejuvenated that by the time Del returned from collecting Leo and Simeon from her friend Julia’s to pick me up to take me back to their place for the evening, I had relocated Stefan’s bike to a spidery corner of the garage, relocated the hateful jogging bottoms to my Imperial Cancer Research bag and relocated much of my mascara to a tissue in the bin. Had I had so much as a shred of self-esteem left I would have rolled it into the shape of a marlinspike and relocated it up his backside to boot. But I didn’t. All I had left was the horrible feeling that the moment I’d really cocked up on by missing was the one, back in February, when I could have written ‘cancel’ on the enrolment form.

  ‘Humph!’ said Del. ‘Humph! Well, that’s charming, that is! I even made him a pine-kernel pilaf! As if I haven’t enough to do! Well, in that case I think I’ll just shove it all in
the freezer and order us a curry in, don’t you think? Or is he planning to come back later to bore us anew about his glittering career?’

  She looked at me sharply to gauge my reaction.

  I fashioned a what-the-hell-who-gives-a-stuff! one. Then twittered it. ‘What the hell! Who gives a stuff?’

  In the end, we opted for a Chinese, because the boys wanted chicken balls. And two bottles of red that Ben had been saving for some Wales / Norway friendly, most of which we consumed with the hot and sour soup in a kind of hysterical, demob relief.

  But I could never keep anything from Del for too long. Once the boys were ensconced with Ben watching football on telly, we took ourselves, plus a wine bottle, up to her bedroom, where I outlined the sorry gist of me-and-Stefan’s demise. For demise, whatever agenda he might be working from, was what it most emphatically was. I had had a dull ache in the pit of my stomach all evening - and it was nothing to do with the egg foo yung. It was a horrible way to feel, and I remembered so acutely how it did feel. So whatever Stefan’s motivation for casting his net in the direction of Tia Slater (and cast it he had - emphatically so) it didn’t really matter. One thing was for sure. I wasn’t going to be made to feel that way again.

  ‘Humph!’ she said. ‘What a toe-rag he is! And what the hell’s a ceramics cafe when it’s at home? Sounds completely implausible and contemptibly fashionable.’ She poured me the last of the wine and put the bottle down on her new bedside table. It rocked slightly.

  I sighed and sat down on her bed. I felt used up and grubby. ‘I haven’t a clue,’ I said. ‘A café where you can buy pots or something, I suppose. Anyway, I presume it has an ambience that she thinks might be enhanced by his efforts. I don’t know. And I don’t much care.’

  She looked disdainfully at her bedroom walls.

  ‘Huh. Should have let her take these, then. Ugh. They’re so gross. D’you know? I don’t think I can even bear to spend the night with them. In fact, why don’t I just have the bloody things down and be done with it?’

  She walked across to the wall and yanked the largest one from its hook above her bed. ‘And what’s with this disgusting orange? Was it the dregs of a couple of cans of emulsion or something? It looks like cat sick.’

  ‘No, no,’ I corrected her. ‘You should consider yourself privileged. He did them specially for you.’

  ‘Is that right? Aren’t I the lucky one, then? But come on. What was he thinking? I nearly had a fit when I saw it. This room is pink, Lu. And this painting is orange.’

  ‘Tia said it was a trendy combination.’

  ‘Lu, “trendy” is not something I generally strive for. This is a bedroom. Not a branch of Dorothy Perkins. I’m sorry, but you don’t put an orange painting on a pink wall.’

  I took another mouthful of wine. ‘Oh, but it had to be orange. It’s orange because it’s after Still. Clyfford Still, I think it was. Abstract Expressionist. They’re all,’ I gestured expansively with my glass, ‘after Abstract Expressionists, you see. Which was apparently a terrifically important school of abstract art. In New York. In the late - oh, well, I don’t know, whenever. But definitely terrifically important. That one over there - that maroon one? That one’s after Rothko.’

  She pulled it down and scrutinized it. ‘Is that right, Lu? My dear, it is a piece of board that has been painted red. If I’d paid good money for this I’d be after him too. It looks like a carpet tile.’ She slung it on the bed.

  I picked it up and looked at it morosely. ‘He killed himself, you know.’

  ‘I’m not in the least surprised. Ugh. And as for this one …’ She plucked the third from the wall and glared at it. ‘What’s this one after? A bucket of paint stripper? A smack in the gob?’

  I squinted at it. ‘Oh, that’s the Förg,’ I told her. ‘Which means it has - now, let me see if I can remember. Yes. That’s it. “A simple beauty that evokes a wistful and spiritual longing.” Apparently.’

  She lobbed it disgustedly on to the pile. ‘Is that so? Hmm. All it evokes in me is a heartfelt desire to throw up. So perhaps it would like to take itself off and evoke it somewhere else. Perhaps,’ she took down the last painting, ‘it would like to take this monstrosity along with it. Then they can be wistful and longing together. Come on, my darling,’ she flopped down on the bed beside me, ‘repeat after me, “He’s a rat-bag, a toe-rag, a scumbag and a shit-face, and I’m better off without him.” Yes?’

  Yes. Ben dropped us back, and after I’d tucked Leo and Pikachu into bed, I took the paintings from the rubbish bag Del had put them in and propped them in a corner of the garage, with the absolute, absolute, absolute intention of giving them back to Stefan when he returned, which he presumably would at some point, to pick up his paints and his bike. But, looking at them now, I had a thought. It occurred to me how much I’d learnt over the last few weeks. How much knowledge I had acquired. How much I’d come to understand about art. About impressionism, cubism, surrealism, op-art. And how much I had learnt about their creation as well. How it was that, at the hands of a great artist, a simple square of uniform colour could, if one were to approach it in the right frame of mind, become imbued with the power to explain, to enhance clarity, to help one connect with one’s inner life. To act as a metaphor - was it De Kooning who said it? - for relationships, a metaphor for life. I arranged them against the wall, side by side. There was, I had to admit, a certain compelling quality about them. A certain representative resonance. What was it Stefan had said about colour? About the hypnotic quality of tonal juxtaposition? About the essence of the power of colour in abstract art being in its powerful contemplative facilitation? I stood, thus, for ten, maybe fifteen powerful, facilitated, contemplative minutes.

  Then I picked up the red one and bashed it to bits.

  ‘Ah. So I was right, then,’ Joe says, when we reach the traffic-lights a few minutes later. ‘He is a wanker.’

  I nod my head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I see. And do you want to talk about it?’

  I shake my head. ‘No.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’

  I put my head on the steering-wheel. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ he says equably, and pulls out some gum. ‘Anyway, the main thing is that we’ve got a busy week coming up and I have to get the rostering sorted today. Oh, and we’ve also got to get some ads in the paper. Big developments while you were away, because Luxotel have given us the contracts for Bath and Edgbaston - no, no, no need for congratulations or anything - which means I’m going to have to get a big push on, recruitment-wise, and start thinking about expanding on the parts front. Isn’t that excellent news? Light’s gone green, by the way.’

  Light’s gone green, indeed. Lights never go green in my life. Never. It’s red, amber, red with me, every time, always. And by the time we get to his parking space, and he has rambled on in similar jocular fashion, it occurs to me that my life would be so much simpler if I could just let go of all my fanciful artistic and romantic notions and develop a full-time fascination for boilers.

  ‘Oh, and by the way,’ he says, as he opens the back door and reaches for his case. ‘I’ve got something for you. Might cheer you up.’ He clicks open the case and pulls out a (oh, God - yet another!) painting. It is a picture of chickens and flowers and dolphins and stars, carefully painted in bright poster colours and liberally plastered with green and gold glitter. At the bottom, in tiny joined-up handwriting, are the words ‘To Lu. Thank you for my tea, from Angharad Delaney XXXXX.’

  ‘Oh, bless her,’ I warble at him. ‘How sweet of her. Bless her.’

  He beams happily, crumpling his scar as he does so. ‘And entirely unsolicited, I might add, in case you were wondering. Which you were, of course, weren’t you? But, no, she brought it round with her last night. Oh, and this, too.’ He hands me something else. It’s a little woven bracelet. ‘It’s a friendship band,’ he explains. ‘All the rage, apparently. She - oh, my Lord. Lu! Don’t tell me you’re at it again!’
r />   This time, I take the tissue he’s proffering and blow mightily into it, as if I might manage to expel something of the pain in my head along with the unbidden outpouring of misery.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I mumble. ‘I really didn’t - I really don’t want to bother you with all this stuff. I’m all right. Really.’ I slide the bracelet over my wrist. ‘Could you put the picture back in the car for me, please? I don’t want to scrumple it up in my bag. I’m all right. Really, I am.’

  He looks doubtfully at me, but does as instructed. Tell you what,’ he suggests gently, ‘let’s go for a coffee and a croissant or something, shall we?’

  ‘No, no.’ I sniff again. The last thing, the very last thing I want to do is slosh around in the mire of my hopeless love-life, particularly with someone with chest hair and androgens and six bloody girlfriends on the go. Particularly with someone who just wouldn’t understand. ‘You said we were busy. Let’s just get to the office, shall we? You know. Get on.’

  He looks at me carefully. ‘Are you absolutely sure, Lu?’

  ‘Quite sure.’ I snuffle.

  ‘Well, OK. If you say so.’ We start walking up the lane to the lights. ‘Oh,’ he says suddenly, ‘almost forgot. Your car. They wanted to know if you had any preference numberplate-wise. Won’t be too long now, eh? Oh, and which type of hood you were after. There’s a choice apparently. I’ve got all the gen back at the office for you.’

  I suppose I should be pleased. I suppose I should be pleased and relieved that Joe has, contrary to all my expectations, simply got on quietly with the business of organizing my car. I wonder if he’s paying for it too.

  ‘Oh. I didn’t realize there was more than one type. Isn’t it just up when it’s raining and down when it’s sunny?’

  But who cares, anyway? There isn’t any sunshine in my life. Ever.

  In the end, I submit to being taken for a coffee, because Iona has brought in Lily’s daughter, Aurélie, to see Joe for half an hour, and as it’s such a nice day - meteorologically speaking, at any rate, which is something, I suppose - she suggests I might like to walk up to the castle with them at lunchtime and have a sandwich while Aurelie feeds the birds.