‘Joe!’ I yelled. ‘Joe! Come back here this instant!
‘Uuuugh,’ gurgled Jean Paul, ‘washafug sappen?’ I rose to my feet and lobbed the tissue at his lap.
‘Don’t move!’ I barked. ‘Don’t move, you hear me?’
Then I snatched up my bag and sped off in pursuit.
I caught up with Joe in the foyer. The contents of his pockets were strewn across the top of the cigarette machine, and he was standing in front of it, slamming in coins.
‘There you are,’ I said, rather needlessly. ‘Joe!’
He raised his head. ‘Don’t start, Lu,’ he said.
‘Don’t start? Don’t start? And what on earth are you doing?’
He glared at me. ‘Lu, I am buying some fags.’
I slapped his hand away angrily. A shower of loose change exploded all over the floor. This aggression was becoming contagious. ‘Oh, no, you’re not!’ I barked. ‘You’re coming right back in there to sort this mess out.’
He leant down and started gathering up his money.
‘Joe,’ I said, ‘listen! There’s a man in there with a broken nose, and blood everywhere, and - and - God! Will you stop doing that? You’re coming with me now!’
I started retrieving his scattered belongings and lobbing them into my handbag. ‘We’ve got to sort this thing out. Now. God, his nose, Joe! He might need to go to hospital! He might need an operation! We need to call an ambulance! Oh, God, Joe! Why d’you have to go and punch him like that?’ He began feeding the coins in again. ‘Joe! You are not going to stand here and buy a packet of cigarettes. D’you hear me? Not! Don’t you realize what you’ve done?’ I jabbed a finger angrily in the air. ‘That’s your best client in there! Your best client! Don’t you see what this means? Joe, you have to come and sort this out! You are going to come with me right now, d’you hear? Right now!’
He pressed one of the buttons and the machine started rumbling. A packet of Marlboro plopped into the tray. I was trembling so much I could hardly focus. I reached down to grab them. ‘And you are not having a cigarette.’
He beat me to it. ‘No? Just you watch me,’ he said.
His face was like thunder. Right then. Rrrright, then.
‘Right, then,’ I snapped at him. ‘Sod you. Do you hear me? You can sort it out yourself. I’m going up to bed.’
But how could I go to bed? How could I? There was a man not a mile away supine and bleeding (to death, quite possibly), and the person responsible was - hey-de-bloody-ho - calmly buying a packet of fags in the foyer. Men. Men! I stomped off back to the Orangery.
It was puddled with moonlight, and still in darkness. And I could just about make out Jean Paul’s shape in the chair. I pushed open the door carefully and tiptoed towards him. He was still sprawled where I’d left him, feet splayed on the tiling, and with splashes of blood decorating his shirt. The tissue, however, was no longer in his lap. It had been carefully twizzled into the shape of a bung, and was currently sprouting from his now crusty nose. And he was snoring. Snoring like a horse.
‘See?’ whispered Joe. ‘Drunk as a skunk. Drunk as a bloody skunk.’
I whirled around, startled, and he put his arm up to shush me. The packet of cigarettes was still unopened in his hand.
‘Oh. Right,’ I snapped. ‘And I suppose you’re Mr Lime and bloody Soda, are you?’
But his anger had obviously dissipated. ‘I didn’t say that, Lu,’ he said reasonably. ‘Here, let me have a look at him.’ He slipped the cigarettes into his pocket and crouched down beside the chair. Jean Paul snuffled a little and smacked his lips together. His right eye was swelling. Joe ran gentle exploratory fingers over the bridge of his nose.
‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Doesn’t look very broken to me. Looks more like I got him on the cheek, to be honest. Look. Here’s the mark. By here. Think I did more damage to my fist than his face.’ He flexed it, and smiled wryly. ‘It wasn’t that hard, Lu. Honest.’
‘Well, it looked pretty hard to me!’ I hissed. ‘You lobbed him half-way across the bloody room!’
‘It wasn’t, really. Look, I don’t make a habit of this sort of thing, you know. He was just roaring drunk and went flying. He’s fine. Chances are he won’t even remember in the morning. And anyway,’ he shrugged, ‘it’s done now, isn’t it? So I guess I’ll just have to deal with the consequences.’
Consequences. There would be many, I was sure. Not least the possibility that the Luxotel Group would probably decide to put their boilers henceforth in less volatile hands. What a stupid, needless mess. ‘So what do we do with him now?’ I asked.
Joe shrugged and stood up. ‘You think I much care?’ he said levelly. ‘Leave him to sleep it off, I suppose.’
‘But we can’t just leave him here all night!’
He glanced down at Jean Paul and considered. ‘He’d bloody well deserve it if we did. But, no, I guess we can’t. No rush. I’ll go and see if I can dig Claude out of the bar. We’ll get him up to bed. Don’t worry.’
‘But what about,’ I gestured, ‘his face and everything? What will you tell him?’
‘Claude? The truth, of course. What else can I do?’ He set off across the room, then turned in the doorway and said gently, ‘You go on up, if you like. Leave it with me.’
As I picked up my shoes, I could hear Jean Paul snorting. Like a truffle pig truffling. As Joe had said, there was every chance he’d have forgotten it by morning. But what if he hadn’t? What then? I watched as Joe disappeared from view.
Then I walked back to Jean Paul and took out his bung.
It is dark on the fifth floor. Dark and a little cold. I work my way around its labyrinthine passages and eventually light on room 507. I’m still shoeless. Because I am minus one heel. It is twenty past twelve. I tap gently. ‘Joe?’
I listen carefully. Hear nothing. I tap again. ‘Joe! It’s me! Lu! Open up!’
This time I hear something. The sound of a chain being drawn back. The sound of the door being unfastened. He opens it. ‘Oh!’ he says. ‘Lu! You still up?’
Up and still dressed in fact. Like he is. And he looks like he’s just stepped off a film set. Bow tie hanging down, shirt undone, tumbler in hand. What with me in my spangles, we make a right pair. Except I suspect I don’t look quite so arresting. Not as if I’ve been dragged through a hedgerow exactly. No. I look worse. I just look like the hedge.
‘Alka-Seltzer,’ he observes, noticing the direction of my gaze. He gestures to the chair, then sits down on the edge of the bed and swallows the rest of it. ‘Couldn’t sleep?’
If only he knew. If only he knew how much sleep he’s been stealing from me just lately. This is just one more lost night among many. I sit down and shake my head.
‘I wanted to talk to you. Before morning.’
‘Oh?’
‘Just so you know how to play things tomorrow. To tell you that everything’s all right. You know, with Jean Paul.’
He sighs. ‘Well he’s tucked up and sleeping like a baby, at least. And tomorrow’s another day, as they say. We’ll just have to hope it all pans out, won’t we?’ He puts his hand across his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. ‘Christ, Lu. I can’t quite believe I did that. I bloody decked him! This might take some sorting.’
‘No, it won’t,’ I say. ‘Because I’ve already sorted it.’ He lifts an eyebrow. ‘I mean, you don’t need to worry. Because you won’t be hearing any more about it.’
He tips his head back and laughs, but without much mirth. ‘You sound like you’ve got a contract out on him.’
I wish. ‘I woke him up. While you were off finding Monsieur Dumas I woke him up. Just to be sure.’
‘Sure? Sure about what?’
‘To be sure that he would remember in the morning. Because it seemed to me that what he’d be most likely to remember was that you’d hit him. Especially as he’d be waking up with a black eye. But I wasn’t so sure he’d remember why you’d hit him. So I thought I should remind him. So I woke him up. An
d I told him precisely why you’d hit him, and I showed him the rip in my dress. And I told him that he was very very very lucky that he wasn’t spending the night in a police cell on a charge of attempted rape. And that I’d had every intention of making sure that was exactly what he would be doing, and that the only reason he wasn’t - the only reason he’d got away with it, so to speak - was because you, his friend, persuaded me not to. I think it did the trick.’
That and the slap. This aggression is catching. But I’m certainly not about to run that one by him. He stands up and puts his glass on the table. ‘Well,’ he says. ‘You are one brave lady. And that was exceedingly shrewd thinking, Miss Fisher. No wonder he looked so contrite. I’m impressed. Well done.’
I’m not sure if I should stand up now as well. Stand up and shuffle off to bed, perhaps. I stand up. My foot hurts. I sit down again. I don’t want to go to bed. Not yet. ‘And there was something else, Joe. I wanted to say I’m sorry.’
‘Sorry? Whatever for?’
‘Because I never said thank you.’
‘You didn’t need to.’
‘And for calling you an idiot.’
‘I was an idiot.’
‘And a Neanderthal.’
‘Ditto.’
‘No, you weren’t Joe. God, I should never have said that. That was really crabby of me, and I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean it, Joe. I was just frightened. God only knows where things would have got to if you hadn’t come in. I was so stupid! I should have known what might happen. If I hadn’t put myself in such a ridiculous position in the first place, then—’
‘It wasn’t your fault, Lu! Jesus! Don’t think that!’
‘But it’s true, Joe. I behaved like a complete idiot. I knew very well that he was coming on to me. I should have realized … And I should never have gone in there. If I hadn’t none of this would have happened. I’m just so grateful you turned up. You were so heroic - there you were, with that great hunk of plaster up your arm, and you still managed to leap in and save the day, and—’
‘Oh, please, Lu! Enough. All in a day’s work for the knight in shining armour about town,’ he says ruefully. ‘No thanks necessary.’
He puts up his arm to wave away the heroics. There is a nasty gash oozing on the side of his hand. I hadn’t noticed it before. Why hadn’t I noticed it before?
‘Joe! You’re bleeding!’ Suddenly, more than ever, I want to kiss it better. I want to kiss him better. I want to kiss him. ‘Let me take a look at that,’ I say instead.
He holds out his hand for inspection. ‘Caught it on the lift door when we were taking him up to bed. Bastard.’ He laughs. ‘He bloody got me, after all!’
‘Well,’ I say, scrutinizing it. ‘It needs a proper cleanup. And it definitely needs a plaster.’
‘I haven’t got one.’
‘No,’ I reply. ‘But I have. I’m a mother, remember. I always have plasters.’
In this case, as it happens, because it’s a brave, brave woman who ventures out in such shoes as I was wearing with nothing between her and the threat of complete exfoliation of seven layers of dermis. But who cares? I’ve got one. I can be of some help here.
‘OK, Mummy,’ he says, grinning and sitting down on the bed again. ‘I’m all yours. Do your worst.’
As luck would have it, I also manage to find an antiseptic wipe. And some wasp cream. A relic from our trip to the zoo. We decide against the latter but he is mightily impressed by the contents of all my little organizer pockets and I’m absurdly grateful that the God of Forgotten Handbags stepped in earlier today.
‘It’s my grandma,’ I tell him. ‘I think it must be genetic. She always had everything you needed in her bag. Colouring pencils, Parma Violets, handkerchiefs, safety-pins. So I’m a bit like a Girl Guide. Always prepared. Plus Leo doesn’t have a grandma, of course, so I kind of feel it’s important, you know?’
‘How come?’ he says. ‘What happened to your mum, then?’
‘She died. A long time ago. When I was nineteen. She was only forty-three. She had breast cancer. I don’t think my dad ever really came to terms with it.’
‘He died last year, didn’t he? I remember Del telling me.’
I nod. ‘I think that’s why - no, I know that’s why I’ve been so determined to leave teaching and do something else with my life.’ I stroke the wipe gently around the edges of the cut. ‘My mum always had such amazing energy - such a lust for life. And then there she was, all of a sudden, gone. I think it was a huge sadness to my dad that I never … Well, that my circumstances were such that it was so difficult to, well, make anything of my life, really. He knew I wasn’t happy teaching. You know? Well, anyway. You don’t want to hear all this. Lift your hand there so I can dry it. What about you? What about your parents?’
Joe holds up his hand obediently. It is warm to the touch and surprisingly soft. I expect it’s hormonal or genetic or something, but touching his hand is making my head swim a bit. ‘My parents live in Spain,’ he says.
‘In a little village just outside Javea, called - wait for it - Jesus Pobre, of all things.’ His accent is faultless. ‘We stayed there in a villa when I was nine or ten and they fell in love with it, basically. Bought a place when I was in my early teens. They moved there when I was seventeen.’
I dab carefully at the cut, cradling his palm in mine. ‘But you didn’t?’
‘I’d left school by then. Got an apprenticeship, had some money, friends. I had no intention of going anywhere, least of all some dozy hamlet in the middle of the sticks.’
‘But what did you do?’
He shrugs. ‘Stayed behind. It wasn’t such a big deal. They had no plans to sell the house in the short term. At first, they’d just go over for the summer, and sometimes in January. They didn’t settle there permanently till I was in my early twenties.’
I have a riffle through my plasters and can’t find one big enough. It’ll have to be two. I start to pull them from their wrappers. ‘But all that time, I mean while they were away, you just stayed here on your own?’ I picture the seventeen-year-old Joe looking after himself, and though I don’t doubt his capabilities, I wonder how he managed back then, all alone.
‘It made sense. It meant I could look after the house for them. And I was always,’ he smiles, ‘an independent little soul. And that’s where Liz and David come in, of course. They were our next-door neighbours, you see.’
Which explains things. I do see. About them, at any rate. ‘You’ve known them a very long time, then.’
‘They were my parents’ best friends. Known them for most of my life.’
I stick the plasters on and he flexes his hand.
‘And ditto Rhiannon, I guess.’
He looks at me carefully. ‘Right. And Rhiannon.’
‘So what did happen, Joe?’
His forehead creases. ‘What often happens, I suppose. I was busy building up my business. I was very driven. And away a lot. Providing money, but little else. She did her thing. I did mine. Once Angharad came along, and she was stuck at home all day, well …’ he shrugs ‘… it just didn’t work any more. We’d fallen out of love way before then, I think. We just replaced it with mutual resentment. That’s all.’
I don’t say anything, and he must think I’m waiting, because he then says, ‘And, yes, I was unfaithful. Just the once. It was mindless and I’m not about to justify it. But neither am I beating myself up about it any more. It wouldn’t have made any difference in the end. It could have been either of us. Anyway,’ he says, rising, ‘that’s life, sometimes, isn’t it?’
I pick up the plaster wrappers and scrumple them into a little ball between my fingers. I wish he would say more, but then it occurs to me that there is probably little more of value to say. I feel sudden admiration for Liz and David’s wisdom. It’s pointless to blame. It was just another marriage that didn’t make it. Culpability apportioned, guilt decided - whatever the circumstances, whatever the catalyst, whatever the detail, what does
it matter really? It’s all history now.
I watch his expression shake off the past and regroup.
‘Well,’ he says, looking at his watch and stretching. ‘What a very long night it’s been, eh?’ He crosses the room and starts rummaging in the little pot on the tea tray. He hasn’t got his sling on and his plastered arm hangs awkwardly. I wonder, watching him, how he manages now.
But time to go, clearly. ‘Yes,’ I agree briskly, suddenly deflated by his change of gear. ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right.’ I start fishing around in my bag for my keycard. ‘Early start in the morning. Better push off to bed.’
He turns around. ‘I didn’t mean that, Lu,’ he says. ‘I didn’t mean I wanted you to go. I was going to make us a coffee. Stay and have a coffee.’ He pulls out some sachets and waggles them at me. Does he mean it? I wonder. Does he really want me to stay? Or is he just being polite? Jeez, we’re been here already. And I don’t seem to be getting any better at it.
‘Or tea, maybe?’ he says encouragingly. ‘Earl Grey? English Breakfast?’ He starts riffling around again and brandishes some little packets. ‘Bourbon biscuit? Custard cream? Ginger nut, even?’
Yes, he does, I realize. He does want me to stay. He throws them on the bed and advances with the kettle. I don’t know if it’s those puppy-dog eyes, or just the notion of Joe having been so sad in his life, or simply that for the first time since the zoo he’s looking at me with something approaching interest in his eyes, but whichever it is, a slow stirring of something is percolating through me. A delicious something. A powerful something. They say that inside every woman another, different woman is struggling to get out. One with balls and ambition. One who knows what she wants. Or maybe they don’t. But that’s certainly what seems to be happening to me. Perhaps, even now, my brazen image down at Exo is transmuting, Dorian Grey-style, into the me who stood here a few moments ago.
‘Oh, I don’t know …” I say, but I say it without conviction. With such an absolute absence of any sort of conviction, in fact, that I might just as well leap on him now and have done with it. Which does not go unnoticed. He takes another step.
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