One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Liz, it turns out, is at the school fete today because her grandchildren - Rhiannon’s sister’s children - are pupils here. As Angharad herself was, apparently, before moving to the private school. She comes every year, she tells me. Which, after her comments, puts me to shame because that’s certainly more than I’ve managed. I wonder if Joe used to come to them too.

  ‘And what about Iona’s husband?’ she says. ‘I hear he’s had a heart-attack. How is he, do you know?’

  I update her on his progress and promise to pass on her good wishes. And they buy thirty Welsh cakes between them. They then declare themselves in need of some fortifying tea, so I direct them to the Ivy Bush Tavern (or so says the sign on the adjacent classroom door). Something that would be of no consequence whatever were it not for the fact that minutes later, as I trot across in search of a tea-towel, a name I recognize floats from the rumble of their genial dialogue. They are, I realize, talking about Joe. As I steer a route past them I catch the tail end of it.

  ‘It’s great,’ Liz is saying. ‘And I think he’s on top of it. And it’s certainly lovely to see him looking so well, arm notwithstanding, of course.’ She lowers her voice. ‘Did I tell you, by the way, Pam? He’s back with Jeannine again. Bless.’

  It’s difficult to elicit what Pam’s thoughts are on this subject, without looking as if I’m waiting for a bus. It’s difficult to elicit what this subject is, period. God! Pam. Liz. Iona. Uncle Tom tall blonde woman flipping Cobbleigh. Why does everyone but me seem to know everyone else?

  I will just have to reach my own conclusions.

  Wednesday 13 June

  Paralysed as I was with the stress of trying not to spend my every waking moment leaping from conclusion to conclusion like a demented hare, the last thing on my mind was the Exo opening party, but Iona called mid-afternoon to remind me, and to check that I was still going to go. She’d spent all afternoon at the hospital and the last thing she wanted to do, she told me, was get the bus home to an empty house. Nick had driven back to Hemel Hempstead that morning and wouldn’t be returning till late on Friday. I didn’t want to let her down.

  ‘Oh, I’m so pleased, cariad. And guess what?’ she said, with awe in her voice. ‘Nigel Walker is going to be there!’

  The name meant nothing to me whatsoever. ‘Nigel who?’ I asked.

  ‘Tsk!’ she said, shocked. ‘You mean you’ve never heard of him?’

  ‘Er, no,’ I replied. ‘So who is he, then?’

  He was, she explained, a sportsman. An ex-Olympic athlete, in fact. And, more to the point, an ex-rugby- player too. An ex-rugby-player for Wales, specifically. Which, in these environs, meant as near to deification as it was humanly possible to be. And probably why his existence on Planet Icon had, up till now, passed me by. I don’t much do sport as a rule.

  ‘He’s doing the opening, apparently, so I thought I could get his autograph for Dai. Oh, he’d be so chuffed, bless him. See you later, then, lovely. You never know. Perhaps we could get you one too.’

  We’d arranged to meet up with Joe there. He’d had some sort of business to attend to down in Penarth and said he would make his own way. He also had another J - 7 in his diary, so I wasn’t sure that he’d show up at all.

  Iona came up to meet me at the office. Despite her sparkly blouse and her upbeat demeanour, she looked drawn and hollow-eyed and as if what she really needed was some rest, but I think she needed company more. Lily had been in to visit, she’d said, and Dai’s sister from Maesteg had brought him a fatless sponge. He was, she said, looking more like himself. As much like himself, she commented wryly, as could be expected with half his heart buggered up. As we walked down to get the car I marvelled at her stoicism. How did she live with that kind of fear all the time?

  Exo was based in the fashionable new retail development they’d recently opened in Cardiff Bay. A throng of achingly trendy people had already spilled out on the pavement, all braying at each other in newsreader voices, and holding foot-long blue-tinged champagne flutes. We drove round and put the car in the new multi-storey, then made our way back across the road.

  ‘Well,’ remarked Iona, as we were ushered in and handed our glasses. ‘I’m certainly glad I didn’t bother with my two-piece. What a dreadful bunch of scruffs this lot are!’

  With the champagne we’d also been given more publicity material. The number three seemed to be the thrust of the theming. That and insects. Exo was short for Exoskeleton, apparently, and the trio analogy was evident elsewhere: head thorax abdomen, mind body spirit, past present future, and, rather bizarrely, I thought, the Oasis-inspired directive of be here now. But strangely, given that this was essentially a posh beauty parlour, no cleanse tone moisturize. Too last-century perhaps.

  We edged our way slowly inside. The salon itself was on the first floor, blue lit, and reached via a long sweep of blond wooden staircase with a wall on one side made of pale blue glass bricks. It felt a little like the inside of a toilet cistern. And, as befitted a place with such an esoteric bunch of mission statements, even the stair treads had attitude, each one etched, as it was, with an uplifting quote. ‘Why worry?’ said one. ‘Is as does’, said another. I skipped over ‘Read a poem a day’.

  Once we reached the top, Iona - who was standing on ‘The worst almost never happens’ which seemed spookily apposite - spied the object of her affections within seconds. ‘There he is, lovely. See? Isn’t he something? Oh, and there’s Joe, too.’

  And there was Joe, too. Across the room, looking lovely. And deep in conversation with a man in a skirt. My heart went bing-bang-a-bong as I spotted him. And bing-bong again, as he spotted me. We caught each other’s eyes and for a second it was as if there was no one else in the place. No, really. He was looking at me. Looking at me intently. One brow slightly arched.

  Saying something to me with those piercing green eyes. I didn’t have the first clue what they were trying to transmit, but who cared? He shouldered his way towards me through the sea of bobbing heads. Was this what it was going to be like from now on? This rush of endorphins every time we clapped eyes on each other? That we were destined, like two excitable molecules, to go fizz! bang! pop! every time our eyes met? Oh, me, oh, my. What a turn-up. What a thing.

  ‘Hello, you,’ he mouthed, beckoning me to come a little nearer. He leaned closer still and put his lips to my ear. ‘Done a lot of nude modelling?’ he whispered.

  ‘… and so I looked up, and there it was. About twenty feet high. I couldn’t believe it! Hanging there. Right slap bang in the middle of the salon. Right in the atrium. I nearly died, Del. I nearly died.’

  We hadn’t stayed terribly long.

  Because it hadn’t been terribly much fun. Whatever mesmeric delights had been occasioned by that piece of singularly divvyish misreading of Joe’s expression were wiped out in an instant. Because there’s only so much indignity a girl can take.

  So I took Iona (plus precious autograph) back home to Grangetown and was back at Del’s to collect Leo by seven. My face, by that time, was still only marginally less terracotta than the nasturtiums and pelargoniums that sprang enthusiastically from her pots. She followed me into the kitchen and tutted. ‘What?’ she demanded. ‘What was twenty feet high?’ She put down her trug and pulled out a chair for me to sit on. ‘Whoops. Spaghetti hoops. Hold on. There. Come on - what?’

  ‘The painting! The painting Stefan did for Exo, of course! It wasn’t the blob! It was supposed to be the blob!’

  ‘What blob? You’re not making any sense, girl.’

  ‘The blob painting! The one he showed me! You know - I told you. The one he was supposed to have done for Exo. The painting he’d done for the atrium. But that’s what I’m saying! It wasn’t! It wasn’t the blob painting at all! Del, it was a painting of me!’

  She sat down, too, and raised her eyebrows enquiringly. ‘Of you?

  I put my head on the table and groaned. ‘Three paintings actually. It was a triptych, made up of three separate panels. To tie
in with the insect allegory, I suppose.’

  ‘Insect allegory? What’s that when it’s at home?’

  ‘Oh, you don’t want to know. Some pretentious crap. Anyway. So it was three paintings, three huge paintings, all in a row, side by side. All hung on wires. You know, head, thorax, abdomen and so on. So I was chopped up into three. Lying down. Three panels. One with my head and shoulders, one with my - God, my whole body in it, and one with the legs. God, he even did the blue nail varnish!’

  ‘You’ve lost me, I’m afraid.’

  ‘The picture, Del! The picture he did of me. The naked picture he did of me! The charcoal. You know, the one he did of me when I went round there that time. He’s obviously used that instead. He’s obviously made an oil painting out of it. A huge oil painting. Three oil paintings!’

  ‘Well, well,’ she said, grinning. ‘And are they any good?’

  ‘Good! Good! They were abominable, Del! God! I was soooo embarrassed! Well, you can imagine, can’t you? I walk in there and the place is heaving with people and right there staring down at me is, well - me! A huge me, a huge, distorted, slavering me, with enormous drooping boobs and my knee sticking up in the air, and an expression on my face that, well - well, I looked like a centrefold on heat! Oh, it’s too, too horrible. I shall have nightmares for ever more. Oh, there was acres of it, Del. Acres and acres of pink flesh and wibbly bits, and well, you know … pubes! Mine! All swirly and sprouty and I mean - ugh, ugh, ugh!’

  ‘What a hoot!’ she exclaimed, clapping. ‘I’m going to have to go down and pretend I want to join. What fun! I don’t know what you’re making such a fuss about, Lu. I think it’s brilliant! And I’m sure it can’t have been that bad. I mean, it is a fitness place, after all. Besides, on the evidence I’ve seen, you should consider yourself lucky you didn’t morph into a lobster or a plank of wood or something. I take it it was a pretty good likeness, then, yes?’

  I nod, slowly. ‘Oh, yes. Absolutely, horrifyingly, unmistakably me. I mean even with all the frantic brushwork and mad hair and the leer. Oh, yes. It was a good likeness, all right. It was the first thing Joe saw when he walked into the place. He said he was gobsmacked. He said he nearly choked on his champagne.’

  Ah, but did he like it? That’s the point.’

  ‘Point? Point? God, I’m still in shock that he’s even seen it! Oh, it’s so embarrassing. All those people! All those hundreds of people! Oh, Del, how will I ever live it down?’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t worry if I were you. I’m sure no one else even noticed.’

  ‘Joe did.’

  ‘Yes, but he already knows you, doesn’t he?’

  And more intimately than most now. Oh, God.

  ‘Anyway,’ she goes on, ‘it’s not like you’re going to be down there cavorting around with your clothes off on a regular basis, is it?’

  ‘No, but there were a couple of photographers there and at least one of them took a picture of it. I’ll probably be a double page spread in the Western Mail in the morning. What a cheek! The nerve of him! I mean, can he do that? I mean, shouldn’t he have to ask my permission or something?’

  She got up to put on the kettle. ‘I don’t think so. I mean you already gave it to him, really. You did pose for him, after all. Seems to me he can do what he likes with it. Seems to me he already has. Was he there?’

  ‘Oh, yes. He was there all right. Prancing around with a stupid hat on and guzzling champagne and slapping fish rolls in his mouth. Oh, and he was so full of it! He said he’d been meaning to give me a ring and tell me about it. I’ll give him ring. I told him I’d half a mind to wring his bloody neck.’

  ‘Wring whose bloody neck?’ asked Leo, who’d walked in.

  ‘Language!’ I snapped.

  ‘What a laugh!’ observed Del.

  20

  Thursday 14 June

  ‘What a laugh!’ observes Joe, popping gum from his packet. ‘I mean, you’ve got to see the funny side, haven’t you, Lu?’

  Oh, ha bloody ha. And which funny side would that be? The image of my prostrate form came, rather distressingly, to mind. It was true that once I’d established that the combined media machine of Cardiff had deemed the Exo opening party worth little more than a couple of column inches and a rather grainy photo of Nigel Walker, I had calmed down a little on the exposure front (and, well, fair enough, I was quits with the rat-bag at least) but, even so, the tag ‘funny’ was not one that came naturally to mind.

  And now we’re on our way to Birmingham, Joe and I, and the last thing I want is for him to remind me of anything about it. That I’d … that Stefan and I’d … that we’d … What mania had possessed me? Ugh, ugh, ugh.

  ‘Have I?’ I answer stiffly. ‘Well, I haven’t yet, I can tell you.’

  ‘But you will,’ he says consolingly. ‘It’s not every girl who gets herself that kind of publicity.’ He chuckles. ‘And you can’t deny you looked like you enjoyed modelling for it, can you?’

  I can see from the corner of my eye that he’s looking at me. Looking at me, I’m sure, in a completely new light. I keep my eyes on the road. ‘That,’ I say, finally, ‘isn’t the point. The point is that if I’d had even the slightest notion that the result might be hung in a public place I wouldn’t have dreamt of letting him do it.’

  Even ‘letting him do it’ sounds seedy, somehow. But he laughs. Ho ho ho.

  ‘It was a good painting, Lu. I mean, fair play, the guy may be a dipstick but he does have a talent.’

  Oh, yes. For the seduction of witless maidens.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, shocked. ‘You mean you liked it?’

  ‘Very much. And so did everyone else I spoke to. It was quite a talking point, in fact.’

  My twenty-foot, naked, slobbering self? ‘Well,’ I concede, ‘evidently he does, then. But, like I said, that’s not the point. I wasn’t posing for the benefit of the clientele of Exo, was I? I wasn’t posing so that half of Cardiff could ogle my breasts. I was posing because … because …’ Uuurgh. ‘Well, anyway,’ I say, sniffing, ‘it was personal and he shouldn’t have done it. He had no right.’

  Joe takes his gum from his mouth and wraps it carefully in some tissue. ‘Lu,’ he says sternly, ‘you’re ranting. Why can’t you just chill out about it? God!’ He exhales extravagantly. ‘You always get so indignant about everything. And what’s the point? It’s up there now, and it’ll doubtless be staying. So there’s no point in railing against it. And why worry anyway? You looked great. The business.’

  Great? The business? What planet is he on?

  ‘Oh, great, for sure. Great as in megalith bottom. Great as in—’

  He turns his head. ‘Lu, you’re a woman, not a pretzel. Great as in great. Great as in sexy. And the only reason you can’t see it is because, as ever, you’re too busy getting on your high horse about it.’

  ‘Hruumph. And why wouldn’t I? How would you like it if it had happened to you? How would you feel if it were your genitalia wanging in the breeze up there? Ho ho I don’t think.’

  He smirks and falls silent. Indignant, indeed.

  Oh, why does he say things like that to me? Why?

  OK, I will concede that his observation that I looked great, the business and sexy to boot was moderately uplifting, but his observation that I was always indignant about everything was more than moderately annoying. How dare he? What did he know about it? And why couldn’t he say something completely unequivocal? Like ‘I fancy you, Lu.’ How hard was that? But he said nothing more for the next twenty minutes, and I was still feeling ranty when we pulled up at the services. We’d been narrowly beaten by a coachload of tourists and had to make a dash for the restaurant. I’d had no time for breakfast and my stomach was rumbling. Could one politely eat chips before noon?

  Could one politely eat chips ever again, in fact, when one’s five-acre stomach was aloft in Cardiff Bay? I pulled out two trays and handed one to him. But he shook his head. ‘Er, no thanks. Nothing for me.’ He patted his stomach. ‘Just coffee.
Get me a big one, will you? I’ll go and grab us a table.’

  I went up to the counter and, as I was now to be eating alone and under scrutiny, I decided to forgo the fries and opted instead for the small bowl of fruit and a wizened white roll. I got him a cappuccino, which he fell upon, wincing.

  ‘Heavy night, then?’ I asked.

  He pulled a face. ‘Um, ye-es.’

  ‘So it was a good party?’

  Now he shook it. ‘Oh, I didn’t stay long at the party. Went out to dinner.’

  Oh. Oh, that. I recalled the ‘J - 7’ that I’d seen in his diary. Oh, yes. That. I don’t know what possessed me to utter the words I said next. A kind of masochism, maybe? Exasperation? Who knows? All I know is that it suddenly seemed the right thing to do. Jump off the express train to disappointment I’d started riding. Move on, move out, move up. That kind of thing. Oh, if he would only drop a bit of his sex-life into the conversation now and again, instead of making reference to mine all the time, then I’d be denied any reason to hope, and could therefore get on with the next bit of my life. Was it so much to ask? That he offered up a casual ‘Jeannine my girlfriend’, or something? ‘That tall, blonde woman I’m seeing’ or whatever? But he hadn’t. And out the words popped. Just like that.

  ‘Oh,’ I said, melon ball teetering on spoon, ‘with anyone nice?’

  The ‘nice’, to my utter dismay, came out with quote marks attached. He blinked at me. ‘What?’

  I plopped the melon ball into my mouth and sucked it in what I hoped was a nonchalant manner. Then said, in what I hoped was a similarly disinterested one, ‘Last night. Just wondered, that’s all.’

  He slid his coffee cup back and forth over its saucer a few times before lifting it to his lips and sipping cautiously. Then his left eyebrow inched quizzically upwards a fraction. ‘Why d’you ask?’ he enquired, looking at me over the spirals of steam.

  I moved in on a grape. He was still looking at me.

  I couldn’t read his expression at all. ‘No reason,’ I said.

  He put the cup down. ‘Yes, there was.’