In a Good Light

by Clare Chambers

  Right up until the very last moment I entertained the possibility that I might not go: after all I would have to change shifts with one of the other waitresses, and find something respectable to wear (but what?). Curiosity won of course, as I had always known it would, and the appointed evening found me perfumed and painted, in a smart dress and uncomfortable shoes, standing in the bar, toying with a glass of orange juice that I was too sick with nerves to drink.

  There was no sign of him there or in the foyer, so I went to my seat, which was in the dress circle, one in from the aisle, and made an attempt at reading the programme notes, losing the plot in about the second paragraph. I couldn’t shake off the feeling that I was about to be exposed as an impostor and thrown out, that people could tell just from looking at me that I’d thought there was no Strauss but Johann.

  I’d bought a big bag of wine gums at the station, in case he didn’t turn up and the performance was boring, but I felt too inhibited to take them out of my handbag. All around me the auditorium was filling up, but the aisle seat remained unoccupied – oppressively so, it began to seem to me. Then the house lights dimmed and the orchestra began tuning up, and just as the first notes of the overture rose like balloons from the pit, he came down the steps, with silent, hasty tread, and slipped into the seat beside me, flinging his coat across his knees, and there was no chance to do more than exchange a quick nod until the end of the first act.

  ‘Aren’t you taking a bit of a risk?’ I said, as we fought our way back to the bar at the interval.

  ‘I suppose I am,’ he replied. ‘It’s completely out of character.’ He had gone to the trouble of pre-ordering drinks to avoid the crush – it was what had made him fractionally late – and it took him a while to track them down: one red wine, one white.

  ‘You choose: I didn’t know which you’d prefer.’

  ‘I can’t drink alcohol at the moment,’ I replied, and I could see the light dawning even before I added, ‘not while I’m taking the tablets you prescribed.’

  He looked appalled at his error. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘I wasn’t thinking of you as a patient.’

  ‘Good,’ I said. ‘Perhaps if I knew your name I could stop thinking of you as a doctor.’

  That was how it began, with a curious mixture of impulsiveness and calculation. For an extra-marital affair it was incongruously restrained. It was weeks, for example, before we got around to making love, and even after that it was something that could only be infrequently achieved. Opportunity and location did not often present themselves. His house was out of the question. I wasn’t completely comfortable with the idea of bringing him home for sex-in-the-afternoons with Christian in the next room. Although I had done the ethical thing and registered at a new practice, Geoff was still Christian’s GP and I couldn’t help feeling there was something questionable in the arrangement. Since Geoff’s free time was mostly incompatible with mine the relationship had to be conducted to a large extent by telephone. Every fortnight he would make some work-related excuse for not being at home on a Wednesday night – my weeknight off – and we would meet up for a drink.

  We never discussed his family. He made no complaints about his wife’s failure to understand him, as adulterers are widely believed to do. In fact he made it clear that he was not prepared to take any risks that might cause her suspicion or pain. ‘You know I’ll never leave my wife,’ he said, right at the outset, to which I replied, ‘I’ll never leave my brother,’ and we laughed out loud, to find ourselves in such perfect accord.

  Since Rowena told the other girls that I am an ‘Artist’ they have stopped calling me Sad to my face. I can’t see the logic of this: some of my favourite artists were famously sad: Van Gogh, Dora Carrington, Mark Rothko . . . Rowena herself keeps badgering me to do some freelance (and, I suspect, free) artwork for the restaurant, principally a giant mural of the Italian Riviera on the back wall. I’ve tried explaining that I’m a miniaturist: I don’t do big pictures. It’s detail that’s my thing.

  She was on about it again that night, while I was in the staff loo, struggling into my waitress costume, which was slightly crushed from having spent the day in a plastic bag in my car boot. She’s one of those people who doesn’t find a toilet door any barrier to conversation.

  ‘You could do it the week we’re away,’ she was saying while I buttoned my shirt and peered at my face in the mirror, which was lit by a single, flickering neon strip. ‘The paint smell would have gone by the time we reopen.’

  ‘Have you got a coat hanger?’ I interrupted. My green linen suit was hitched over a hook on the door like a giant tea-towel, and I didn’t want anyone drying their hands on it. I heard her footsteps retreat and then advance and a wire hanger was thrust under the door.

  ‘I’ve got a teacher friend who could lend you an overhead projector,’ she went on, undeflected. ‘If that’s how you do it.’

  ‘Mmm,’ I grunted, dabbing face powder over the remains of that morning’s foundation. The gold compact was my mother’s, and my grandmother’s before that. It had a particular smell, sweet and cloying, like the inside of an old lady’s handbag. All at once I could see mum’s dressing table back at the Old Schoolhouse, with its set of tortoiseshell brushes and her few cosmetics, so infrequently and inexpertly applied.

  ‘We’ve got to do something about that light,’ I said as I emerged, zipping up my skirt. ‘It adds on about ten years.’

  ‘I think I’ll just take down the mirror,’ said Rowena. ‘Until this frizz grows out.’ She was recovering from one of those deep-fried perms, which had reacted badly with her previous regime of bleach and colour, to leave her hair as brittle as spun sugar. It looked as though it might melt in the rain.

  ‘Listen. Have you ever got back in contact with someone after a long silence?’ I asked her.

  She put her head on one side to consider, happy to abandon the matter of the mural. She is used to my strategy of refusing to engage with topics that don’t appeal.

  ‘No, I can’t say I have,’ she said finally. ‘I think I’m probably still in contact with everyone I’ve ever known, apart from my ex-husbands, I mean. I sort of collect people.’

  ‘Well, I seem to mislay them,’ I said, as we made our way upstairs to the restaurant. I explained about coming across Cassie. ‘So what’s the best way of tracing an address?’

  ‘You could get her number from Directory Enquiries, if her surname isn’t too common.’

  ‘I’m not sure I want to phone in the first instance. I’d rather write.’

  Rowena chewed her lip. ‘Do you know anyone corruptible who works for the police or the DVLA?’

  I raised my eyebrows. ‘I didn’t realise you were such an expert at subterfuge.’

  ‘Well, it’s all my divorces. They’ve made me devious.’

  ‘Evidently. But for someone like me who doesn’t have your underworld connections . . .’

  ‘The internet. You can get anything off the internet,’ she said confidently.

  ‘How?’

  ‘I don’t know. We’ll have to ask one of the geeks in the kitchen. Who is this woman anyway?’

  ‘She was my brother’s girlfriend. His first real girlfriend. When I was fifteen they . . . split up.’ I hesitated over the phrase: it made their predicament sound so ordinary. ‘It was a horrible, disastrous split that should never have happened. I think he got over it quicker than I did. Anyway, he had bigger things to worry about – like being paralysed.’

  It was twenty to one by the time I pulled up outside the house and, unusually, Christian’s light was still on. This slight deviation from our routine gave me a moment’s anxiety, and I wondered if he might be feeling ill, but as I approached the house I could hear Ella Fitzgerald singing Cole Porter, loudly, so I guessed he must be okay. Playing music at an unneighbourly volume in the early hours is one advantage of living in a detached house on a large plot that we don’t exploit often enough.

  Christian rolled into the hallway to greet
me while I was still on the threshold trying to free my key from the lock. He was wearing his blue towelling bathrobe and his hair was sticking up in wet spikes as if he had recently been in the bath, and he had a curious expression on his face – an unnerving combination of smugness and guilt.

  ‘Hi Pest,’ he said, cheerfully, reverting to a childhood nickname that fell out of use at least twenty years ago. This only fuelled my suspicions.

  ‘Are you all right? What’s going on?’ I asked, slinging my bag over the corner of the settle.

  ‘Nothing. Well. Come in and sit down. Do you want some wine?’

  I glanced at my watch. We quite regularly exchanged news and conversation over a drink, but not at this time of night. Sunday evening is Happy Hour. Christian opens the drinks cupboard at about six o’clock and starts mixing cocktails. About a decade after they went out of fashion we’re suddenly hooked. He’s working through a recipe book I bought from the remainder shop next door to Rowena’s, and sometimes he’ll throw in one of his own invention, just to catch me out. The Tequila Mockingbird is probably his best creation.

  I was wide awake now, and if he was in confiding mood, I decided it might be a good time to bring up the matter of replacing Elaine, so I followed him into the sitting room and sat on the couch. The music cut out while he fiddled with the controls, and then resumed at a friendlier volume. On the coffee table, beside an open bottle of claret, were a couple of wine glasses, but as I went to help myself I realised they had both been used. One of them bore the imprint of a lipstick crescent at the rim. Company.

  ‘How has your day been?’ Christian went on, bringing a fresh glass from the recess in the wall. ‘How did you get on at the school?’

  ‘Fine,’ I said, warily. ‘The kids were sweet.’ I made no mention of my encounter with Cassie. Penny is a subject that is never raised any more. I upended the wine bottle and a scant thimbleful of black dregs slid into the bottom of my glass.

  ‘Oh,’ said Christian. ‘We must have finished it. Shall I open another?’

  ‘No. I wasn’t desperate,’ I said. ‘So what is it, then?’

  ‘Nothing bad. I just want your advice about something. Because it affects you. It’s Elaine.’

  ‘Oh, I’m so glad you’ve brought this up,’ I said, and was about to launch into my plea for her dismissal, when something in Christian’s eager expression stopped me.

  ‘I’m going to ask her to marry me,’ he said, and a faint blush spread over his face.

  I must have been gaping like a netted fish because he gave my knee a squeeze and said, ‘Are you all right? You look a bit shocked.’

  ‘Wha . . . Well,’ I stammered, as the art of speech returned by degrees. ‘I am a bit. Surprised. To tell you the truth.’ All the while I kept giving these irritating gasps of laughter. ‘I had no idea. I didn’t realise you were even keen. I obviously haven’t been paying attention.’

  ‘There wasn’t anything to notice. We haven’t exactly been all over each other. We’ve been out together a few times while you’re at work. Most of the time we just sit in watching videos.’

  Or taking baths, I thought. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before? How long has it been going on?’ In spite of my best intentions I’d managed to sound disapproving instead of simply intrigued.

  ‘There was nothing to tell until now. It wasn’t love at first sight or anything. In fact, when she first came I thought she was a bit abrasive.’

  At last, some common ground!

  Christian drew his dressing gown, which was starting to gape, more tightly around him. ‘But then after a while I found I was really looking forward to seeing her, and I realised I’d never felt that way about any of my other carers.’

  ‘They were blokes,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Yeah, but even so. And then that week she was off with flu – do you remember that?’ (I did: I’d done some of my best work in ages.) ‘I really missed her. I think that’s when it started to dawn on me that she might be The One.’

  ‘But, I mean, marriage. You’ve only known her three months.’

  ‘Well, three months is quite a long time in my circumstances. When someone helps you to get your pants on from day one, intimacy builds up pretty quickly.’

  ‘Do you think she’ll say yes?’ Suddenly I found myself looking at Christian through fresh, unsisterly eyes, as a potential partner. When I was a child I had assumed he was the most handsome man on the planet, but hadn’t given the subject much thought in recent years. Of course, the wheelchair might put some people off, but in spite of it he still looked fit and strong. He worked out with weights twice a week and his upper body was broad and muscular. A stranger might have put his age at thirty-two, though he was nearly forty. His hair was still thick and showed only the first incursions of grey. He was funny and talented; he made plenty of money designing and testing computer games, without ever having to leave the house, which was spacious and tasteful and paid for. Now I could see that to someone like Elaine, he wouldn’t be an unattractive proposition.

  And then it hit me, like a snowball full in the face, what it would mean for me if Christian and Elaine did get married, and how insanely oblivious I must have been to all their hints and signals. Elaine had been here bright and early cooking breakfast this morning because she’d just spent the night. And all the suggestions about the property ladder and the friendly careers advice were nothing but veiled warnings of my imminent eviction.

  ‘. . . thinking of asking her on her birthday, but I’m not sure if I can wait that long,’ Christian was saying, as I tuned back in, still spitting out snow. ‘What do you think?’

  ‘What does it matter what I think? It’s your life,’ I said, in much the same tone that Mum used to say, ‘It’s your money,’ whenever as a teenager I proposed buying some piece of trash from Miss Selfridge.

  ‘Well, it’s your life too, and your home. I didn’t want to spring it on you as a done deal.’

  ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘And I don’t want you thinking you’ve got to find somewhere else to live. You can stay here as long as you like.’

  ‘Don’t be daft, Christian. Of course I’d have to move out. You can’t start married life as a threesome.’

  ‘But Elaine wouldn’t mind. I know she wouldn’t. She understands our set-up and she’s not territorial. Anyway, she really likes you.’

  I shook my head at his naivety. How little he knew of his intended bride, and womankind in general. ‘You know what they say about two women sharing a kitchen,’ I said, as light-heartedly as I could.

  ‘But where would you go?’

  ‘I could move in with Dad for a while,’ I said, with more enthusiasm than I felt. ‘Hone my backgammon skills. Immerse myself in Classic FM.’ It occurred to me that from what I earned from the books and Rowena’s I wouldn’t be able to afford to do anything else. Without the considerable subsidy that my rent-free existence represented I wouldn’t even be able to live in the same part of the country any more.

  ‘You do like her, don’t you?’ I could see the first shadows of doubt pass across his face.

  ‘Of course I do,’ I lied valiantly. ‘We get along fine. I’m just so amazed that you want to marry her. I mean, no one gets married nowadays.’ That wasn’t what I meant at all. I really wanted to say: marry, by all means. But not her.

  ‘I know. I’ve surprised myself. But she’s so inspiring. She really believes she can get me walking again one day. She’s downloaded tons of stuff off the net about new treatments in America. I’ve already seen most of it, and it’s no good to me, but the fact that she’s so wholehearted, when everyone else has lost interest—’

  ‘I haven’t lost interest!’

  ‘Okay, not lost interest, but got used to things. Elaine’s still got that crusading enthusiasm.’ This would have worked very much in her favour. I know there are some people who manage to reach an accommodation with their disability: a few rare souls even claim it has enriched their lives, made them more apprecia
tive of life’s pleasures, but Christian is not one of those. He has never grown comfortably resigned to not walking. Regaining the use of his legs remains a goal, however distant, that he won’t relinquish. ‘I’ve tried both,’ he says simply. ‘And walking’s better.’

  ‘But you don’t need to marry her to get the benefits of that.’

  ‘I’m not putting it very well. I feel like any time I spend apart from her is time wasted. Plus, there’s the sex. I mean regular sex.’

  ‘Yeah, well, don’t go into details.’

  ‘Anyway, we’ve got no reason to be pessimistic about marriage. Our parents are still together and happy.’

  ‘They’re living six thousand miles apart!’ I protested.

  ‘That’s just circumstances. And it’s only temporary. In fact it’s a testament to the strength of their relationship.’

  ‘When did you say Elaine’s birthday is?’

  ‘Three weeks’ time.’

  ‘How old will she be anyway?’

  ‘Forty-seven,’ Christian said, with a trace of defiance.

  This surprised me. I had assumed she was older than me, but not by that much. ‘Well, she’ll definitely say yes then,’ I assured him. ‘When women get past thirty-five they panic and marry anyone who asks.’

  ‘Really?’ Christian looked sceptical, and not especially flattered. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘There’s a whole publishing industry dedicated to the subject. Where have you been?’

  He shook his head, at a loss, then he grinned at me. ‘You’ve only got a year left then,’ he pointed out. ‘Better start panicking.’

  I didn’t sleep well that night. I lay awake until three, fretting, and then I made myself a cup of hot milk and took it into the studio and sat with it in the dark. I could hear the distant swish of traffic on the bypass, and the occasional screech of tyres and slamming of car doors that signalled the homecoming of Caterham’s youth.