One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Exactly,’ I agree. ‘I don’t know what he thinks he’s on about. Did you have a fight or something?’

  She picks up the knife again and scowls at it. ‘Just because I said he couldn’t play on the Scalextric any more. But I wanted us to play in the garden. I wanted us to have our party. But all they want to do is play with stupid cars all the time.’ I am trying to work out how this appalling conversation has come about and can’t. Oh, God. What on earth has he said? ‘And now Daddy’s up there playing with them and nobody wants to play with me, and—’

  ‘Come on, Angharad. Take no notice. They’re all stupid boys, aren’t they? Come now. Dry your eyes and let’s get this lovely tea made and then I’m sure they’ll be down like a shot. In any case,’ I reassure her, ‘there’s no harm done, is there?’ I gesture to the bucket. ‘I’ll be pleased as punch when Daddy gives them to me, I can tell you. Pleased as punch. Really I will.’

  Her eyes start to swim again and she shakes her head sorrowfully. ‘But he won’t,’ she sobs, ‘and now he’s all cross.’

  ‘Oh, Angharad—’

  ‘Because I already told him.’

  17

  You wouldn’t know anything was up, of course. If you were nine, like Angharad, or ten, like Leo and Simeon, you wouldn’t know at all.

  They were down minutes later. We’d laid out all the scones with their swirly cream hats, put the chocolate fingers in fans, made a tower of mini-rolls, transferred crisps into bowls and little sausages to sticks. Then we’d taken it all outside, with the requisite lashings of lemonade, on to the table on the little patio. Angharad had been down and fetched up some more chairs - pink and green plastic ones - a little too small for them, then she handed round napkins and passed round the goodies and we all sat down and had tea.

  A very nice tea, if tea’s your particular bag. Lots of merry chit-chat about gorillas and race-tracks, and with Angharad and Leo’s little spat all made up. And nothing to suggest that there was any sort of atmosphere. Like I said, you wouldn’t know.

  You wouldn’t know, that is, unless you were me. Unless you were me at that point on the doorstep when feet were wriggled back into trainers, ‘thank you for having me’ and ‘you’re welcome’ exchanged, and the flowers in question, at Angharad’s bubbling insistence, duly presented, together with the obligatory fulsome and delighted thanks.

  They say you can convey all sorts of emotions with your eyes, and, over the top of my sweet-smelling armful, I attempted to fashion a sort of oh-shit-this-is- so-embarrassing-and-whatever-she-told-you-it-really-wasn’t-how-it-was kind of look.

  Joe’s fingers were thrumming out a tango on the door jamb. And his eyes, glittering so green in the early-evening sunshine, were way, way better at communication than mine. They said, ‘Sod off.’ No question.

  ‘Safe journey home,’ he incanted. ‘Goodbye.’

  And the silly thing is, the most frustrating thing is, that I would have been thrilled with the flowers today.

  Attack is the best form of defence. That’s the rule, isn’t it? But it hadn’t been what I’d intended. Oh, no. No, what I’d intended, from the point at which Leo had made his sparkling little faux pas to the point at which I had wrested the flowers from their wrappings, mixed my little sachets of flower food with water and arranged the lot - carefully and lovingly - in my biggest vase, was that I would phone him up and explain what had happened. That I would do the decent thing. That I would apologize to him.

  So that was what I did. I had to look up his number in my address book. I’d never called him at home before.

  ‘Delaney,’ he said. As if he was at work. Had he forgotten he wasn’t?

  ‘Is that you, Joe? It’s me.’

  ‘I know,’ he replied. His voice was as cool as a mountain stream, but without the health-giving mineral component or the high-altitude leisure connotations. Just the kind of environment you wouldn’t want to plunge your foot in.

  ‘And I wanted to call and, well, tell you—’

  ‘Tell me what?’ He sounded bored too.

  ‘That, well, that I’m sorry about earlier. I don’t know exactly what Angharad told you, but I’m really sorry, and—’

  ‘Sorry about what, Lu?’

  There it was again. Lu.

  ‘About the fact that she told you that Leo told her that I’d said that if you gave me those flowers I’d shove them up your backside. And … err … so on.’

  ‘Oh, that. And did you?’

  ‘Did I what?’

  ‘Did you say that?’

  ‘Urn. Yes.’

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Yes, but that was ages ago. Ages. And it was taken out of context. It was said in anger, you see. And certainly not for Leo’s ears. And he obviously thought it would be very clever to repeat it to Angharad and, well, I’m very sorry.’

  There was a silence. Then he said, ‘Said in anger when precisely?’

  ‘Oh, Joe, does it matter? I can’t even remember.’

  ‘Yes, you can. When?’

  ‘Oh, when I was cross with you. When you called Stefan a wanker, if you must know. When—’

  ‘What’s he got to do with it?’

  ‘Well, nothing now, less than nothing. But pretty much everything at the time.’

  ‘No. I mean how’d you get from that to flowers?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. It was just—’

  ‘No, really, Lu. Humour me. I’d really like to know. What has the one got to do with the other?’

  ‘Look, it was just one of those things you say. I was talking to Del, and I told her what had happened and I just said that if you thought you could get round me by - well, you know. Just one of those things you say when you’re angry.’

  ‘Get round you by sending you some flowers, you mean.’

  ‘Yes. I suppose it must have been. Yes.’

  ‘From which I presume I can infer that you assumed I might.’

  Pardon? ‘Um. Yes, I suppose.’

  ‘And if I had sent you some flowers to apologize, that’s how you would have responded, yes?’

  ‘Yes. No! Oh, I don’t know. I was cross. I don’t know. Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn’t. But, on balance, I suppose. Yes. Look—’

  ‘It’s OK, Lu. I get the message.’

  ‘What message? There’s no message! I was phoning to apologize, Joe! I’m sorry, OK? I’m appalled and embarrassed and I’m sorry!’

  ‘But you still think it’s sad.’

  ‘What’s sad?’

  ‘I’m sad.’

  ‘I never said that!’

  ‘I never said you did. But, then, you didn’t need to. I took the point anyway.’

  ‘ “Took the point”? What are you on about? I never said that!’

  ‘But it’s true nevertheless. Even though on this occasion I can’t fathom it.’ What other occasions had there been, for heaven’s sake? ‘What’s so sad about a guy buying a woman some flowers? What’s so sad about me sending you flowers, Lu? Why is it sad? Why does it offend you so much?’

  ‘It doesn’t, Joe. It’s just that in some situations, in some circumstances - and not today’s circumstances, so please don’t misunderstand me here … It’s, well, if you must know, I just think that sometimes men think it’s an easy option—’

  ‘Ah. We’re back with men, then.’

  ‘No! It’s just—’ Oh, what was the point? I’d already jumped into the pit he’d dug for me. ‘Well, yes, in fact.’ I sighed. ‘It’s just that some men seem to look upon it as an all-purpose answer to everything. A sop. It’s nothing personal, but it just happens to be what I think.’

  ‘A sop?’

  ‘Sometimes. Yes. You must be able to see that. And, well … well, it’s not like you don’t make a habit of it, is it? And it’s so easy for you to do - you know, pick up the phone, or get me to pick up the phone, or get Iona to pick up the phone, then reel off a credit-card number or whatever - and, well, it devalues it, doesn’t it? Do you see? Do you understand what I’
m saying? I’m not trying to make a point here. I’m just being honest with you. And it’s basically why what happened today happened, that’s all. It was such a lovely gesture and it was ruined because of it, and I’m sorry, but you did ask, so I’ve told you. So … so … Joe?’

  The line hisses back at me for so long that I begin to think he’s hung up. But he hasn’t.

  ‘I’m still here,’ he says at last.

  ‘Look, I’m sorry. That wasn’t fair.’

  ‘No, no. You’re right,’ he says quietly. ‘My fault. I’ll take myself off to the bottom of the class. Must try harder.’

  ‘Joe—’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  It’s true. I am a bag.

  Cannot believe I just did that. How could I be so horrible? How could I be so unkind? God, if I was Joe and Joe was me and he’d just spoken to me like that I’d be crying by now, no question. How could I be so hurtful? And now I can’t get a picture of him out of my mind. Of him sitting by the telephone, hurt and wounded and crying. Except he wouldn’t be crying because men don’t do that stuff. He, of all people, wouldn’t do that stuff. Stefan might do that stuff, but then Stefan’s not a proper adult anyway. No. There is a natural order to these things. Women like me go around blubbing about everything, and men like Joe send bouquets of flowers. And have stiff upper lips and don’t cry. Women cry. Men send flowers. God! I’m right back with the tar and the brushes. And the assumptions. It’s true. I’m a bag.

  Monday 4 June

  ‘Oops,’ observes Del, when she telephones on Monday afternoon.

  It’s been a strange day, one way and another, because having been so sure I’d be seeing Joe and then not having seen Joe (he called Sunday evening to say he’d be on site in Acapulco or wherever, but Leo had taken both the call and the message - I’d been in the bath and he’d said not to bother me) I’ve been feeling all agitated and chopsy and irritable. And I keep jumping on the phone in case it’s him. And Iona hasn’t been herself either. She started her day with a big row with Dai, apparently, because she’d told Lily they’d have Aurélie and the baby for them overnight next Saturday evening so they could go to some dinner, and Dai had said no, because he was tired and fed up with playing nursemaid to a yowling sprog and so on, which has completely thrown Iona because she’d never realized he felt like that (and so on). So we’re both feeling a bit sorry for ourselves. Still, at least Del’s operation went

  OK. She feels like she’s got a bag of pistachios in her eye, but already, she says, she can see so much better. She’s already booked in to have the other one done in July.

  ‘I know,’ I say, ‘and do I feel five kinds of cruddy about it. He must think I’m such a stuck-up, opinionated cow.’

  ‘I don’t know about stuck-up, but opinionated, certainly. I’ve always thought that was one of your most enviable qualities. You tell the truth. You speak as you find. There’s no harm in that.’

  ‘But there is, Del. I’d intended to apologize to him, and instead I ended up giving him an ear-bashing. Just trampled all over his feelings. Like the bloody cow I am. I know I have. But you know what I keep hoping? Do you know what - bizarrely - I keep hoping? I keep hoping the buzzer will go and it’ll be someone clutching a big bouquet of flowers for me. Isn’t that silly?’

  ‘Err, under the circumstances, I’d certainly say it was highly unlikely. I think you’re probably the very last person on earth that Joe would consider sending flowers to today, don’t you? If, indeed, ever again.’ Which made me wince. ‘Besides, why would you want him to do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. I guess I’d like him to do it just to make the point that he’ll do what he bloody well likes, whatever I say. A sort of horticultural two fingers at me. A kind of shove-these-up-your-own-backside gesture. You know? The sort of thing I’d expect him to do. All the product of a guilty conscience, I suppose. So I can feel less bad about myself. Less like I’ve hurt his feelings so much. Less horrified about the fact that I’d obviously never really credited him with even having any feelings. You know, he’s right, Del. I am a bag, aren’t I?’

  ‘Of course you’re not. Not most of the time, anyway. But if you feel that guilty about it, then why don’t you turn convention on its head and send him some flowers instead?’

  ‘Now you’re just being silly.’

  ‘Tsk! So are you, sweetie. So are you.’

  I did roll the idea around my head for a while. Because it occurred to me that that was essentially what it was all about. Convention. Assumptions. Men sent flowers. Women liked getting them. And that had obviously been the assumption he’d been working from. And why the hell shouldn’t he? And what difference did it make that he could so easily afford to? Why did that make it a less worthwhile gesture? And why did the fact that he made such gestures often make it seem to me as if therefore they didn’t count? Surely, when you thought about it, the opposite was true?

  But today there weren’t any flowers and neither was there any Joe. And when I popped my head round the door to let Iona know I was leaving to pick up Leo and Simeon from school, she told me he’d called, and that he’d asked her to let me know he wouldn’t be needing a ride in tomorrow either. He was off to Birmingham in the morning with Monsieur Deschamp and wouldn’t be back in till late Wednesday.

  18

  Wednesday 6 June

  I had been looking forward to going to my class on Tuesday night. Looking forward to swanning around and letting Stefan know that I’d gone off him, big-time. That I didn’t fancy him any more. Mand, indeed. BBC, indeed. Commissioning art editor, indeed. With a penchant for poetry, perhaps? Well, more fool her. She was welcome to him. And all sorts of other stuff along those lines. It felt good. I felt good. Or if not exactly good in a ‘wey-hey!’ sort of way, at least, way better than expected. Just a little repointing around the edges of my confidence, and I would soon be able to get back on track with my life.

  But I couldn’t go to my class as it turned out, because Del’s eye was still painful. As Ben was out speaking at some meeting or other, I insisted that I keep Simeon for one more night. And you know what? I didn’t miss class for an instant. Not a single instant. Which is another huge weight off my mind. The one good thing about infatuations, it seems, is that they can be as transient as they are intense. Really can’t think what I saw in the guy. A wanker, as Joe said. Though, speaking of which - no, speaking of whom - I’m not sure he hasn’t had more than a teensy bit to do with my road-to-Damascus conversion. In any event, one thing I do keep wanting to do is pick up the telephone and call him. Have another stab at apologizing to him. Perhaps get it right this time.

  Which is a slightly unsettling turn of events, but doubtless simply down to guilt overload. Suspect that my guilty conscience, having been buried for so long in the dusty depths of my bag-like persona (and only surfacing here and there for global crises, BBC Children in Need, etc.), has decided to make up for lost time.

  And at least my cold is better. Which is something to be grateful for, because we are busy beyond belief with sorting all the job applications Joe’s recent ads have elicited, and there is no time for the weary application of Vick Stick to nostril and even less for the kind of self-indulgent introspective analysis that has commanded so much of my attention these last days.

  ‘Look at this,’ says Iona, who I suspect wouldn’t give a cold the time of day anyway, and who is still in feisty enough fettle that only the most reckless kind of virus would dare run the gauntlet of her white cells. She is not happy. Although she has apparently wrestled a compromise from Dai - in which she gets her way on the babysitting front as long as he gets his in the matter of the rugby on Saturday afternoon - a perennial flashpoint chez Williams by all accounts - relations are still on the strained side. Mainly, she says, because he’s being a complete grouch at the moment: snappy and miserable and irritable with her, and spending most of his time sprawled in front of the TV. She thinks he’s having a late male menopause.

  ‘We’ve got an invi
te, Lu,’ she goes on, ‘for the launch party of that health club they’re opening down in the bay.’

  I glance at the card she is brandishing at me. ‘Oh, Exo,’ I say, taking it. ‘How come?’ It’s in the form of an enormous, silver-edged, loosely cross-shaped postcard with a pop-up facility and a raffia bow. The word ‘Exo’ is emblazoned in silver across the middle, and is fashioned from tastefully monochrome images of thin people with towels round their necks. They are mostly engaged in energetic (and, therefore, presumably life-affirming) pursuits. Though not those - if the one who is modelling the ‘X’ is representative - that one would attempt without benefit of a stout panty-pad. It says ‘Mr Delaney and guest’ in the corner.

  ‘Because we did the heating, I assume. Didn’t you know?’

  I shake my head. I didn’t know that, though I do know all about Exo, of course. I know particularly that they’re anxious to reflect the post-millennial mindset and that, consequently, they’re staying largely with the blue end of the spectrum et cetera. And that they have an atrium, of course. And doubtless, by this time, one with a very big picture of a blue blob hanging in it. (Is there a place for me in the art world? Really?)

  ‘Well,’ I say, turning the card over and noting the stylishly scrawled address. ‘It sounds very posh.’

  ‘Ooh, I wouldn’t know, lovely. Not my sort of place at all. I don’t hold with all this cavorting and leggings. But I’m sure it’ll do very well down there. Now they’ve got the assembly sorted and that hotel and everything. And at least it’s a bit of a do. Lord, I don’t think I’ve been out in months! D’you know? I’ve a Lurex two-piece in my wardrobe that hasn’t seen the light of day since the last Five Nations. And I mean Five Nations, lovely. The last Six Nations I hardly saw hide nor hair of him for best part of a month.’ I assume she means Dai. ‘And if he’s not propping up the bar in the Old Arcade he’s flat out on the settee. As much get-up-and-go as a plate of tripe just lately.’ She gives me a nudge. ‘Ooh, I’d go to the opening of an envelope right now, especially if there’s free nibbles and a glass of something. And, ooh, that sounds tidy - they’re having sushi, it says here.’ She rhymes it with ‘mushy’. ‘Come on. Come with us. We’ll have a laugh, eh?’