by Caro Fraser
By the time nine o’clock came, Felicity was miserable and furious. Why couldn’t he just come and get it over with? He must know what he was putting her through, on Christmas Eve too. She made herself another cup of tea and ate three Tesco’s mince pies.
At ten o’clock, with a feeling of sick despair, she realised that he wasn’t coming. She had a vision of him in a pub somewhere, with his mates, or chatting up some other girl. He would have forgotten all about her. Vince was like that. In his mind he’d already ditched her, so she didn’t matter, her feelings didn’t matter. In a fury, Felicity went through to the bedroom and wrenched Vince’s pathetically few belongings out of the wardrobe and drawers and flung them in a heap on the bed. Then she went through to the kitchen and fetched a black bin liner, and stuffed everything into it – shoes, jackets, T-shirts, paperbacks from the living room, CDs, even his marijuana plant, which he’d been cultivating lovingly on the kitchen windowsill. She dragged the bag to the front door of the flat and dumped it outside on the landing. She couldn’t stay here tonight, she decided. She would ring her mum and tell her she was coming early. She and Vince had been invited round to her mum’s place in Camberwell for Christmas lunch, only now there would be no Vince.
She had just picked up the phone when she heard footsteps on the stairs outside. Her throat constricting, she waited for the footsteps to continue up to the next floor, but instead they turned along the corridor and stopped outside the flat. Felicity replaced the receiver and sat down on the sofa and waited, wondering whether Vince had seen the bin bag and investigated it. He might just pick it up and go. But she hadn’t heard the sound of a car or taxi pulling up. The next few seconds seemed very long, and at last she heard the scrape of his key in the door, then it opened. When Vince appeared in the doorway of the living room, she could tell he’d been drinking. He had that maudlin, bleary look. She sat with her arms folded, conscious of how quickly her heart was beating.
‘Hello,’ he said, and glanced round the room in a useless way.
‘Your stuff’s on the landing,’ she said. ‘I’ve been waiting in all bleeding evening. Some Christmas Eve. You could have come by earlier.’
He looked at her for a long moment and then shook his head. His dark hair was uncombed, and fell around his handsome, unshaven face. ‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said.
‘What – too busy putting beer down your face? Or lining up your next bit of stuff?’ She had told herself she was going to stay cool, unconcerned, but the words gave her away. All the bitter unhappiness which she had felt since his phone call yesterday came rising to the surface.
He gave a sigh and sat down on a chair next to the dining table. ‘No. No, I just couldn’t. I mean, I just couldn’t face it.’
‘Well, face it now. I told you, your gear’s outside.’ And she got up and went over to the mantelpiece, where she had suddenly noticed his cigarette lighter lying. She turned and gave it to him, and he stretched his hand out listlessly. ‘You might as well go,’ she added. ‘I’m going round my mum’s in a minute. That’s another thing – you can leave your key.’ She watched as he leant both his elbows on the table and buried his face in his hands. Then he said something, but she couldn’t hear what it was; the words were indistinct. ‘What?’ she asked.
He took his hands away, looked up at her and said in a slow, blurred voice, ‘I’m a bloody, useless failure, Fliss. That’s why I’m getting out. I’m no bleeding use.’
Repressing the desire to agree with him, she said, ‘Oh? I thought it was because you were fed up with me. Fancied a change. That’s the way it came across yesterday.’ Her heart beat hard and hopefully.
‘It’s not you. It’s me. The fact that I’ve got nothing to offer. I can’t take it, day in, day out. You with your good job, you paying the rent on this place, you buying the food, paying for the telly, and everything. You can afford to go out for meals, have holidays abroad, and that, but what about me?’
‘What about you? I told you I could pay for both of us to go to Spain at Easter. Anyway, you could pay for yourself if you didn’t piss it all away down the pub or in the bookie’s.’
‘Yeah, well, there’s nothing to piss away now, is there? Got no job, got nothing. That’s why I can’t stay.’
‘It’s up to you,’ Felicity replied shortly, her voice concealing what she felt. She gazed down at him. Suddenly, to her horror, his shoulders began to shake, and he was crying. Vince, the hard man, actually crying. ‘Oh, come on,’ she said in a gentler voice. ‘How come you got yourself into this state?’ She knelt down next to him and put her hands on his knees. ‘Anyway, d’you think I’m going to let you move out? How you gonna look for another job dossing at a different mate’s every other night? You have to look the part, you know.’
His tears were short-lived, and he wiped his hand quickly across his eyes. ‘You don’t want me, Fliss. I’m fucking useless, man.’
‘Not to me you’re not. Just ’cos you lost your job, chucking in everything else isn’t the answer.’ She reached up and stroked his head. ‘Say you’ll stay.’ From her position of sound, maternal strength she knew she could afford a little gentle pleading to bolster his ego. It was going to need a good deal of bolstering over the next few weeks. He wasn’t likely to find another job in a hurry, not unless it was something menial. And how was he going to take that humiliation, while she carried on earning as much as she did? Barrister’s clerks did all right. How times had changed from the days when she was just a secretary earning peanuts, while Vince always seemed to be flashing dough around, coining it on the horses, raking it in from overtime with BT. It wasn’t fair. ‘Go on,’ she murmured, stroking her hand over his stubbly cheek.
He shrugged, then leant down and embraced her, and she knew that he would not be leaving. ‘You chucked my gear out,’ he said reproachfully.
‘Well, you can bring it back in again.’ She kissed him on the mouth. There was one way she could think of immediately to restore a bit of his masculine confidence. ‘And then you can get us a bottle of wine out the fridge and come to bed.’
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
On Christmas morning Charles slept until after ten. When he woke, he lifted his head slowly from the pillow and was agreeably surprised to find that he had only the mildest of hangovers. Turning over and propping himself against the pillows, he suddenly recalled Rachel’s presence in the house, and realised that it had been the prospect of spending today with her which had stopped him from going over the edge last night, as he normally would have done. He ran his fingers through his hair and yawned hugely, contemplating the day ahead. At that moment there was a knock on his door, and then Rachel put her head round, her manner hesitant and a little awkward.
‘I wasn’t sure if you were awake,’ she said, and smiled. ‘I looked in earlier, but you were still asleep.’
The thought of Rachel coming into his room and observing him while he slept both embarrassed and touched Charles. With natural vanity, he wished that she did not have to see him like this, yawning and stubbly and bleary-eyed, and without his pyjama jacket. Charles did not like pyjama jackets. ‘How long have you been up?’ he asked, smiling back at her, folding his arms behind his head and trying to look nonchalant.
‘Oh, since eight. Oliver, for once, let me sleep in. Would you like a cup of tea? I’ve made some.’ Charles knew instantly, with gratitude but also mild irritation, that she had cleared up from the night before, that he would find everything neat and pristine when he got up.
She came a little further into the room, still holding the door, and Charles could see that she was dressed in a loose-fitting white shirt and jeans. Her feet were bare, her hair washed and shining. He had a sudden fantasy, one in which she came over to him, and let him slowly unbutton her shirt, unzip her jeans, and draw her into his bed and his arms. It was insupportably erotic, and, he knew, highly unlikely. He sighed.
‘Tea would be marvellous.’ She turned to go, and he added, ‘Merry Christmas, by the way.’ This is t
he moment, he thought – come on, turn around again, smile that smile, come to my bed, be my Christmas present. Oh, to unwrap you …
‘Merry Christmas,’ she replied, then disappeared.
‘What shall we do today?’ Rachel sat on the rug in front of the fire with Oliver, who was playing with a big red plastic bus, complete with passengers and luggage, which Leo had bought him. She glanced up at Charles. He was sitting in an armchair nearby with his second mug of tea. He had showered and shaved, and was wearing a comfortable pair of old dark blue corduroys and a faded grey sweatshirt which, she noticed, matched his eyes. She felt very easy with him, she realised, and rather happy. He sipped his tea and let his glance wander from the fire to Rachel’s slender, naked feet. He had never found any woman’s feet so provocative. Was there any part of her which was not simply beautiful? he wondered. Then he heard her question.
‘Sorry. Miles away … What shall we do?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Tell you what. The Boxers always have a get-together after church on Christmas morning. It’s a standing annual invitation. Why don’t we slouch along to that, do our convivial bit, and then come back here and I’ll cook lunch? The fridge is pretty well stocked up. I get a siege mentality at Christmas. Batten down the hatches, you know.’
‘Are you a good cook?’ asked Rachel, stretching her feet out to the warmth of the fire, and bending to kiss Oliver’s soft head.
‘Brilliant,’ replied Charles nonchalantly.
Rachel laughed and rose to her feet, padding across to the window seat. There she sat, looking out at the frost which still covered the grass and branches of the trees, untouched by the wintry sun. There was a comfortable silence, during which Oliver sucked each of the passengers of his bus in turn, and Charles gazed at Rachel, thinking that he would never look at that window seat without wishing to see her there. What a fool I am, he thought. She is someone else’s wife, going through a bit of a crisis, and I am nothing to her, nor ever likely to be. I’m twenty years older than she is, too. Probably just sees me as a father figure.
Rachel turned round. ‘Should I change?’ she asked doubtfully.
Charles thought of Lucy Boxer, who was always so chic and overdressed, and who had in recent weeks been making distinct overtures to him. He had a malicious notion that he would like to dent her ego by turning up with someone who, in a shirt and jeans, could look as effortlessly lovely as Rachel. ‘No,’ he replied. ‘You look perfect as you are.’
Three hours later, while Charles was standing in his kitchen in a Wallace and Gromit PVC apron putting the final touches to his pheasant with cream and calvados, Leo stood moodily by the sink in the house in Hampstead, eating half an avocado with a teaspoon and drinking the remains of a Bloody Mary. He had spent the morning trying to work, but was restless and dispirited and had made little headway. He dropped the avocado skin into the bin and stared out at the garden, in which a lone blackbird hopped and pecked. The sudden sound of the telephone startled him, and as he went to pick it up, he knew immediately that it would be his mother, ringing from her sister Clare’s house in Ruthin, where she was spending Christmas. He made an effort to sound cheerful as he wished her a merry Christmas, and listened for a few moments as she told him how his aunt was, and how many of his cousins she had seen so far. Leo tried, in that brief space of time, to think of some way of warding off the inevitable enquiry after Rachel and Oliver, but when it came, he found he could not.
He hesitated for a moment, then said, ‘They’re not here, actually.’ There was a certain inevitability about telling his mother the truth. It was almost as though he had need of her concern, or pity, or even condemnation. All of those things.
‘What’s happened?’ asked his mother, after the briefest of silences. Leo could hear the note of fear in her voice, and thought suddenly of how it must have been for her when his father had left her.
He drew in a deep breath. ‘Oh, we’ve had a couple of problems lately. Nothing serious. Just … Anyway, she’s gone to spend Christmas at her mother’s.’ I think, he added mentally.
‘Oh, Leo …’ His mother’s voice was slow and heavy with shock and disappointment. Well, he could understand that. She had been so disproportionately happy when he had got married, so pleased about Oliver. And she liked Rachel. She liked and trusted Rachel, and Leo knew, from the tone of her voice, that at this moment she unmistakeably, and quite rightly, blamed him for whatever had gone wrong. The depth of her reproach was there in the very way she spoke his name.
He replied with defensive briskness, ‘Yes, well, she’ll be back in a couple of days. It’s nothing to worry about.’ God, now he had guilt to add to everything else. Why? Why should problems between himself and Rachel cause him to feel guilt where his mother was concerned? No use wondering, he supposed.
Maeve Davies instinctively moved to close the door separating her from the roomful of Clare’s noisy family talking and laughing over the remnants of Christmas lunch, then tugged her cardigan around her as though chilled, the receiver close to her ear. She fought for something to say, something that would not be intrusive or too demonstrative of the panic she felt. They hadn’t been married a year, and now this. She read so much about how easily people divorced these days, how families broke up. And Oliver – she’d seen him only twice since he was born. What if this meant that she would hardly ever see him from now on? As the fears began to pile up rapidly in her mind, the only thing she could think to say was, ‘I don’t like to think of you all alone at Christmas.’
Leo let slip a small sigh, half relief, half resignation. At least she wasn’t going to launch into an anxious, in-depth enquiry into the state of his marriage. Not that that was her style, anyway. With Maeve, it was the things left unsaid which possessed the greatest force. ‘I’m all right,’ he said. ‘It’s not as bad as it sounds.’
‘Really?’ It was a naked plea for reassurance, not about him, but about Rachel and Oliver, the whole thing.
‘I promise.’ There was an uneasy silence, in which he could think of no way of prolonging this miserable conversation. ‘Now go and wish that lot a happy Christmas from me. I’ll speak to you in the new year.’
When he put the phone down, it was as though the air about him was filled with unspoken questions, reproaches, demands for information. All the things she had not said. It had never occurred to Leo to wonder what kind of expectations and hopes his mother might have about him as a husband and father. Now, although she had said nothing, he knew exactly. And he was well on his way to disappointing her. No wonder he felt guilty. He must get out of the house, he realised. Its silence and emptiness oppressed him. He had tried to pretend that this was just another Sunday, but the knowledge that it was Christmas, that everywhere else people were with other people, bore in upon him. He wanted to see Oliver. He wanted to see Oliver with his red bus. God, it was pathetic. The truth was pathetic.
He put on his overcoat, locked up, and drove into town, through ghostly suburban streets where no one walked, past shuttered shops, and along main roads which on an ordinary day would have been crowded with traffic. He drove slowly along Embankment, deserted except for a few lonely cars swishing past him, and turned in through the gates to Middle Temple Lane. He parked his car and got out. The Inns, Inner and Middle, were totally silent, the windows of the elegant grey buildings gazing blankly down on the cobblestones, not even a breath of wind to tip the branches of the tall plane trees etched against the winter sky. It was bleak, lonely, but Leo found something uplifting in the utter silence and grandeur of the place. It was peculiarly pleasant to have it all to himself, to be the solitary figure walking through the cloisters and past the hushed stairwells, his footsteps ringing on the deserted flagstones.
Leo walked up past the church, where lights still shone from the service earlier that morning, and across the Strand into Lincoln’s Inn. He had no idea of where he was going; he simply intended to walk and think, try to open up and examine his life. His life. He remembered a time when that life, his o
wn, private hours away from the places in which he now walked, had been one of excitement and gratification – the clubs, the boys, the early hours of the morning, the tantalising knowledge that anything and anyone could happen next. And above all, love. Love of a peculiar, fleeting kind. Where had all that gone? Perhaps, thought Leo, it was just as well it had gone. I am middle-aged, he told himself. I am forty-five. What business have I to be yearning after that kind of thing? His footsteps slowed, and he gazed around, his breath foggy in the cold, quiet air. It was wrong to think that anyone ever became too old for love. The body might slow, the joints might stiffen, the faculties weaken, but the heart remained capable of passions as painful and transporting as any experienced at seventeen. In many ways those feelings were more poignant in middle age than in youth. Too often unspoken or unrequited, too often perceived for the follies which they were. He stared around at the trees, soaking in the unaccustomed Christmas Day silence of the City. The very sky seemed like the vaulted roof of a great hushed cathedral. He thought of Charles. There had been a time, once, when he would have basked in his growing affection and passion for another man without any sense of shame or foolishness, but something was creeping upon him of late, some sense of opprobrious self-evaluation. Or maybe he was falling into the trap of perceiving things through the eyes of the world. He suddenly wished fervently that he and Charles were twenty-one, and that he could indulge his feelings, his passions, as heedlessly as once he had. It could not be wrong to want to feel, for as long as one could, the helpless, dangerous delight of love.
Leo turned and glanced towards the buildings in New Square, and suddenly thought of Frank Chamberlin. Frank was a High Court judge, now in his late sixties, and one of Leo’s oldest friends and confidants. There was much about Leo which only Frank knew and understood. He lived in residential chambers in New Square, a set of rooms at the top of Number 55. Leo wondered if he was there now. Little chance, he supposed. Although Frank was a bachelor and had lived in those rooms since Leo had first known him, he supposed that there must be family, relatives somewhere, with whom he had gone to spend Christmas. Still, since he was here, it was worth calling on him to find out.