One Day, Someday

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  Just like that.

  ‘No, there wasn’t.’ I put the grape in my mouth and bit into it. Pips. I swallowed them. ‘Just making conversation.’

  He moved his saucer a little to make room for his plaster, then parked it on the table and lifted the cup again. ‘No, you weren’t, Lu,’ he said. ‘You don’t do “just making conversation”. And no, as it happens. No one desperately nice. With the maintenance manager for Tower 2000. Business.’

  I scooped up a brown shard of apple and considered it. Was he lying? ‘Oh. Right,’ I said.

  He shifted a little in his seat. Something like a grin was playing at the corners of his mouth. ‘And was that the answer you wanted to hear?’

  I shifted in my own seat. ‘What?’

  ‘That I wasn’t out with “anyone nice” last night?’

  Uuurgh. ‘It’s of no consequence, Joe. I told you,’ I said, ‘I was just making conversation. OK?’

  ‘OK,’ he said, smiling as he put down the coffee cup again. ‘Then supposing I told you I had been out with someone “nice” last night. What then?’ He was looking at me pointedly now.

  I made a big show of shrugging. ‘Then nothing. Like I said, I just wondered.’

  He lowered his head and blew a little furrow in the foam on his coffee. ‘Oh, right,’ he said.

  And I wish I wish I wish I wish I hadn’t said that. Why had I said that? Why hadn’t I seen it through? Why hadn’t I asked him what I really wanted to ask him? Why hadn’t I said that it was of consequence? Why hadn’t I said that I wasn’t just wondering? That I really wanted to know. That I cared? That I wanted to know who the hell Jeannine bloody Carver was once and for all. Why hadn’t I said that I was suddenly all at sea about him and that if only he’d tell me she wasn’t his girlfriend, that what I’d really like to do was to take back everything I’d previously said done thought / assumed where he was concerned. And start again. From that kiss, maybe? So why didn’t I?

  He leant across the table and narrowed his eyes. ‘It’s only,’ he went on, ‘that you seem very interested in my comings and goings all of a sudden. I wondered if there was any reason for it.’

  I shook my head and started ferreting in my bowl again. More melon, some orange. A glace cherry. He continued to look at me. Even with my head down I could feel his gamma-ray pupils boring little green holes in my head. But I couldn’t find the words.

  Half a year or so passed. I finished the fruit salad.

  ‘Suit yourself,’ he said flatly. ‘Shall we go?’

  This is not good progress. This is crap progress. Del is right. I am developing a bit of a thing for Joe Delaney. But I don’t know quite what to do about it. I don’t know quite what to do about it but at least I now know what not to do about it. What not to do about it is to sit there like some po-faced bloody baggage and pretend I couldn’t give a f**k.

  Because he’s got the hump again. Because he’s got his scowly face on again. And because, when all’s said and done, one thing is certain. Del’s right. Whatever praise he might have heaped on my image, he’s clearly not bothering with the flesh-and-blood me.

  Clearly not.

  The meeting, for which a large group of Gallic hoteliers had gathered, was to go on till six. And didn’t require my presence. Which meant I had three hours to get ready for the dinner. Which would have been an amusing irony were it not that I felt so bloody miserable about it. Three hours I could either spend primping and preening and trying to make myself beautiful, or slap on some slap and read the paper instead. In fact, I spent the first of them holed up in the bathroom, neck deep in Body Shop tangerine bubbles, and knee deep in conflicting irresolute thoughts. Which to do? What angle to take? Round and round I went, getting precisely nowhere. Because much as I wanted to let Joe know how I felt about him, as soon as I envisaged the actuality of doing so, there was JC before me, tall blonde JC, and Joe, saying, ‘Sorry, but …’ I couldn’t bear that. The very idea made my toes curl. On the other hand, if JC was JC as in non-romantic item, as evidenced by my small but growing store of hope-giving moments - he had said it, he had, he’d said I looked sexy in a pointed kind of way - then why didn’t he simply make some sort of move? Obviously because he wasn’t that interested anyway, so why even think about letting him know I was? Why put myself through that? Why suffer the humiliation? Hadn’t I already been humiliated enough?

  I poured myself a glass of wine from the little bottle in the mini-bar and, quite soon after, it became apparent that my makeup bag was having none of my dithering in any case. If I was going down with the ship of failed romances, it seemed to tell me, then I was bloody well going down sparkling and flawless. Thus prettified and glowing, I sat on the bed with the rest of the bottle and a towel round my bottom, and watched Ainsley on Ready Steady Cook. Then The Weakest Link, so that I could divert myself from feeling petulant about Joe by getting cross with Anne Robinson while I painted my nails. Scarlet, on this occasion, because I’d brought my best dress with me. It was a blood-red designer-label devoré and satin affair that I’d picked up in Howells’ last-but-one January sale. And a pair of spindly, strappy, quite ridiculous stilettos. The most appallingly uncomfortable shoes I’d ever owned. And I’d be setting off this confection of seduction tonight with an attractive mock-leather organizer handbag, in fashionable black with contrast frayed stitching, and leaked-biro detail on front. Courtesy George, House of Asda.

  There’d been a text message on my phone when I’d risen from the bathtub. From Leo. ‘Hi Mum! Luv U! Any Pok packs?!!!!!! Forgot A. Del’s Eve bag! Oops! XXX’

  Bugger.

  But what the hell? Why was I doing all this stuff anyway? He wasn’t bothering, was he?

  Clearly not.

  ‘Ah! The lovely Lucienne!’ said Monsieur Deschamp, snogging my cheeks like a toilet plunger and clasping both my hands in his. ‘And looking, if I may say, even lovelier than before. Quite breathtaking, in fact. Don’t you think so, Joe?’

  Joe, who had responded to my appearance in the Outrigger Bar with about as much enthusiasm as a bald man contemplating a matching brush and comb set, muttered, ‘Mmm, yes,’ as if admiring a trifle, then put his face back into his lager. He was wearing a cream tuxedo, one shoulder of which was slung casually across the arm with the plaster. The shirt underneath was crisp and blue-white. The bow tie was cream satin. And a real one. Not clip-on. How on earth had he tied it, I wondered. He looked fabulous. Swashbuckling. Heart-stoppingly gorgeous. But I certainly wasn’t going to say so. Even look so. Oh, no. ‘Mmm, yes’, indeed. Fine.

  ‘And she’s mine, I might add!’ added Jean Paul, with a flourish. ‘I ‘ave sat you by me, chérie,’ he added with a simper. ‘Entente cordiale. Entente treès cordiale.’

  And, well, sod Joe, I thought. Sod him. At least someone was showing me a bit of interest around here.

  ‘Lovely, Jean Paul.’ I simpered playfully, accepting the gin and tonic he was proffering and smearing it with lip gloss. ‘You can tell me all about your new erection in Blois.’

  Which, as it turned out, set a tone of sorts.

  I don’t know if it was simply a function of my determination to starve Joe of my scintillating company, but with two glasses of wine and two gin and tonics inside me, Jean Paul seemed as charming and attentive a dinner companion as any girl could wish for. Plus it transpired that he knew my mother’s home town of Béziers rather well, having himself grown up not far away in Perpignan. Thus we chatted and laughed our merry way through the starter and best part of yet another bottle of wine.

  And I guess that’s partly how these things come to happen. In any event, it wasn’t till the main course that his hand on my forearm and lascivious expression made me realize his chit-chat had a definite agenda. That while I was busy making inroads into my dinner, Jean Paul was attempting to do likewise with me.

  We had moved on somehow to the art world. An area about which Jean Paul evidently knew a great deal more than I would have expected. He waxed lyrical for some moments
about his great love of Degas and how perfectly he thought he captured the female form. No surprise there. Little girls, ballet dancers, women après le bain. Naked women. I’d been there. I shuddered.

  ‘And, Lucienne,’ he hissed, arresting the northerly progress of a small spear of broccoli I had wedged on my fork, ‘Joe tells me you dabble a little yourself.’

  For one horrified moment I thought he’d told him. ‘He does?’ I asked cautiously.

  ‘Oh, but yes,’ he went on. ‘You are an art student yourself, I understand.’ He gave my wrist a little squeeze before giving it back to me. His eyes flicked to my cleavage. His mouth curled in a smile.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said. ‘Got to powder my nose.’

  He looked blank. ‘Call of nature,’ I said. He looked blanker.

  ‘Little girls’ room.’

  He leered. It figured. I went.

  The toilets in the new Luxotel Birmingham Sud were located some way distant from the function room we were in. Once outside, I slipped off my shoes and padded there barefoot, my toes burying themselves gratefully in the soft, yielding pile. As I came out, I noticed that just beyond them was another function area, this one dark and empty. ‘The Orangery’, it said in script over the door. Anxious to retain a bit of distance between me and the hotspot of expectation I seemed inadvertently to have created, I thought I would duck out of the dessert, and send Leo a text message instead. I tried the double doors. They sighed open unresistingly, so I padded in for a nose around. It was a room of similar grandeur to the one we were occupying, with a part-glazed vaulted roof and tall windows on three sides. The flooring was stone - giant diamond-shaped quarry tiles - and the room was full of potted palms, yuccas and citrus plants. There was a faint scent of lemon and compost. I plonked myself down on one of the vast cane sofas and fished out my phone.

  It’s a fiddly mode of communication, text messaging. Especially when you are sitting with nothing in the way of illumination but your little green display. And a cheap pay-as-you-go phone that doesn’t light up the numbers for you. ‘Hi! Msg 4 Leo. Love U Lots & lots.’ Which was probably why I didn’t hear him. ‘Have U done H Work???!!! If Y then 2 Packs Pok!!!’ Probably why I wasn’t aware that he was standing two feet from me. ‘C U tomorrow. Give S & A D & U B my love.’ Probably why the touch of his hand on my bare shoulder sent me six feet in the air.

  It was Jean Paul.

  ‘Ooh, la!’ he chirped, giggling. ‘My apologies, Lucienne! I didn’t mean to startle you, chérie.’

  He was swaying a little. He was probably flammable. Chérie. indeed.

  ‘Oh! Goodness, Jean Paul! Well, you certainly did!’

  He flopped down beside me on the sofa and waved an expansive arm into the darkness. ‘You like it?’

  I switched off my phone and reached down to pick up my bag from the floor.

  ‘It’s very nice,’ I said, rising. ‘Very grand. Anyway. Better get back.’

  His hand, which he’d taken away when he’d startled me, now slipped into mine. He gave it a tug. ‘Don’t go,’ he coaxed, with a glassy-eyed pout. ‘No hurry, is there? Stay awhile with me here. So. You like our ‘otel, do you?’

  I glanced around, conscious of the pressure of his fingers wrapped around mine. I pulled them away, which he didn’t resist, then opened my bag and slipped the phone into it. The hair was prickling at the back of my neck.

  ‘Yes, yes, very much. I just thought I’d come in and take a look and, well, just sending my son a—’

  ‘Ah.’ The hand that had been holding mine now began moving along the outside of my thigh. He smiled encouragingly at me. ‘Then perhaps I can find some more places to show you. Shall we go outside? We ‘ave all kinds of ducts.’

  Ducts? Ducts? What the hell would I want to see them for? This was pushing the allure of combustion too far. I stood up. At least I was free of the sofa. But I couldn’t see my shoes anywhere. Where were they?

  ‘No, thank you. That’s very kind of you, Jean Paul, but I think I’d better get back. They’ll be—’

  ‘Oh, come, come,’ he urged, rising unsteadily to his feet. His hand, which was now warm and damp, slithered across the back of my neck and around my shoulder. ‘Worry not, my Lucienne. They will be busy reconvening in the bar. Come. Let me show you the ornamental fountains. And the queck-quecks! It is a beautiful night.’ He tried to coax me forward.

  ‘No. Really,’ I said, wriggling free of his embrace and stooping to see if I’d accidentally kicked them under the sofa. Quack-bloody-quacks indeed. ‘Ah, but chérie,’ he said, instantly re-establishing it as I straightened. ‘What about our entente cordiale, hmm? You and me, I think, we have an understanding about these things, don’t we?’

  ‘We do?’ Where the bloody hell were they? Perhaps I should leave without them. ‘And what sort of understanding would that be, Jean Paul?’

  His lunge, when it came, was so sudden and unexpected and sure of itself that I lost my balance and barked the back of my ankle against the coffee-table leg. His hand was like a vice against the top of my arm and his hot smoky breath poured in a rush against my neck. ‘Ah, Lucienne,’ he urged, ‘just a kiss. Un petit bise. Come on. Don’t tease me. You always tease me. You and I, you know, we have a—’

  ‘A misunderstanding, Jean Paul! What we have is a complete misunderstanding. So I’d rather you didn’t do that, if you don’t mind.’ I wriggled myself out of his grasp.

  ‘But I do mind, Lucienne!’ he entreated, gusts of buttery breath billowing between us. ‘You are so cruel with me. Cruel! I am very anxious that I—’

  ‘And I’m very anxious that you pack this bloody nonsense up,’ I snarled. ‘So you can stop that right now!’ I tried to swing a slap at him but as soon as I raised my arm to do so, he grabbed both my elbows and pinioned them at my sides. He was alarmingly deft for a lush.

  If a little unfocused. His mouth lurched towards mine and made hot squelchy contact with my cheek instead, chomping its way, mole fashion, through the sparkle dust and blusher, towards what I assumed was its goal of my lips. Yeuch! Not in this lifetime, matey. I yanked my head back and his tongue fetched up against my throat instead. It sounded like a bath emptying.

  ‘Chérie, come on,’ he breathed. ‘Why resist? Why resist?’

  He pressed himself against me, all knobbly bits and groanings, pawing at my chest now with feverish hands. Which made me stumble backwards and, what do you know, I found my shoes at last. One of them, at least. Because it kindly made its presence felt by viciously spiking the ball of my foot. There was a sharp snapping sound and a fire in my instep, which had me yelping with pain and right back where I started. On the sofa, knees up now, with Jean Paul on top.

  He wasted not a second in trying to play his advantage.

  ‘Ah, chérie! he cried. His was clearly not an extensive vocabulary. Chérie Come on! Kiss me! Kiss me now!’ He was half on the sofa and half on the floor now, hands flailing madly and scrabbling at my dress. I heard a rip.

  Jesus Christ. A situation, or what? This was fast becoming more than just difficult. He was drunk and incapable and as floppy as a rag doll, but he was intent on a grope and he was not going to stop. I was almost too incredulous to draw breath. Almost but not quite. There is a moment when resistance, as they say, is useless. When it needs to change tack. To a full, take-no-prisoners, McNab-style attack.

  ‘Get off!’ I bellowed at him. ‘Get off me, you animal! Get your filthy hands off my tits, you great oik!’

  I had his forelock in my fist and was just drawing my knee up to hammer seven bells out of his scrotum when all of a sudden he was whisked to his feet.

  ‘Hey!’ barked a voice. ‘What the hell’s going on here?’

  Joe’s voice. Joe’s voice. Oh, thank God. It was Joe. My heart was hammering in my chest. My right leg had gone dead. I had a scribble of slimy black hair in my hand.

  ‘I said,’ growled Joe, ‘what the hell is going on here?’

  Jean Paul bared his teeth. He was breathless an
d panting. The air was taut with his anger and fuggy with fumes. I struggled to my feet and unswizzled my dress.

  ‘I don’t think,’ he spat, ‘that it is any of your business.’ He scooped his hair back into a clump. Joe’s hand was still firmly attached to his jacket. He yanked it free and batted Joe’s plastered arm away aggressively.

  ‘Is that right?’ said Joe. His voice was low and measured and infinitely threatening. ‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong, mate.’

  Then he lifted his fist, drew it back like a bowman, and slammed it - ker-pow! - into Jean Paul’s astonished face.

  It was just like on Batman.

  I don’t think. I don’t think. Because real violence is not in the least like cartoons. There was, instead, a horrible sickening thwump. I felt like I was going to throw up.

  ‘Christ, Joe!’ I yelled, as he squared up for an encore, eyes flashing, body tensing, expression one of cold determination. He advanced towards Jean Paul again. ‘Stop it!’ I flailed at him. ‘What are you doing?’

  But there was neither need nor opportunity for a double whammy. Jean Paul, once propelled, had travelled some distance backwards and had had his fall broken by a large Lloyd Loom chair. He groaned a little. One of his shoes had come off and blood was oozing from his nose. He was going nowhere. Let alone the distance with Joe. I plunged shaking hands into my bag and pulled out a scrap of tissue.

  ‘Oh, my God,’ I mumbled, sinking to my knees and dabbing anxiously at his face. The enormity of what had just taken place began to sink in. I was shaking. ‘You didn’t need to do that! You might have broken his nose, Joe! Oh, God. Oh, God, Joe!’ I turned to look up at him. ‘You idiot!’ I hissed, horrified. ‘You Neanderthal! Look what you’ve done to him! Look what you’ve done!’

  He was standing there just like a mannequin from Moss Bros, flexing and unflexing his fingers and thumb. Then he looked down and said coldly, ‘So what should I have done, Lu?’

  Then he turned on his heel and marched out of the room.

  21

  Great. Grrrreat. Now what was I supposed to do? What the hell was I supposed to do? Jean Paul was beginning to stir in his chair.