Bookends

by Jane Green

  I spend the morning with Si, and he phones the hospital and makes an appointment with a counsellor for that afternoon. This time, he says, he wants to go alone.

  I manage to make some headway with my novel, but by early afternoon I feel so guilty about leaving Lucy in the lurch, that I consider walking up to Bookends.

  Then again, how on earth would I have made a miraculous recovery in so short a time? I decide to phone instead, and when Lucy comes to the phone I’m astonished by the exuberance in her voice.

  ‘Darling Cath! We are worried about you. Rachel says take lots of echinacea. Tell me you’re feeling better? Have you dosed yourself up with lots of ghastly lotions and potions?’

  ‘Yes, and I’m feeling much better, even though I hardly slept last night. How is everything in the shop today? You sound positively ecstatic.’

  And Lucy, bless her, drops her voice and I can almost see her bringing the phone up to her mouth as she checks that no one’s listening. ‘Actually, I didn’t sleep much myself last night,’ and her voice is positively purring.

  ‘Lucy! You didn’t! You and Josh? SEX?’, at which Lucy giggles.

  ‘God, Lucy! That’s amazing! No wonder you sound ecstatic. How was it, or need I ask?’

  Lucy sighs with pleasure at the memory. ‘Oh, Cath, it was so lovely. So unexpected and so, so lovely.’

  She tells me that Josh had been just like his old self all day yesterday. That getting together as a gang to have our regular Sunday lunch seemed to have somehow brought them back together again, reminded them of how things used to be before she opened the shop.

  They went home last night and Ingrid went out, as she always does these days, and Max went to bed, as he rarely ever does, and, instead of burying himself in a pile of paperwork in his study, Josh opened a bottle of wine and sat down at the kitchen table to talk.

  And they found themselves laughing together over some silly story Lucy was telling, and Josh put the dishes in the dishwasher after supper and then stood behind Lucy as she finished clearing the table, put his arms around her and gently kissed the nape of her neck, ‘Which,’ she said guiltily, ‘always turns me to jelly.’

  And that, as they say, was that, but God, what a pleasure it is to hear Lucy laughing again. It is a welcome and uplifting distraction, and what a relief to know that whatever was going on between Josh and Portia must surely now be over.

  ‘Oh, Cath,’ Lucy sighs. ‘I feel that everything’s back to normal. It’s all been so upside down for so long, but now I’ve got this lovely feeling that life is back on track. Now, sweet Cath, to change the subject entirely, or rather to get back to the original subject, what is happening with the lovely James?’

  I don’t know where to start. ‘You know how some things are just meant to be?’

  ‘Yes?’ She is eager, expectant.

  ‘This, unfortunately, isn’t one of them.’

  ‘But that can’t be true. What on earth makes you say that?’

  ‘Every time we try and get it together, something happens to pull us apart, and I can’t help but feel that this just isn’t meant to be. And God knows I’m happy enough on my own, so maybe this is how I’m supposed to carry on.’

  ‘Nope.’ She is determined. ‘I refuse to accept that as a reasonable answer. If things keep going horribly wrong when James invites you for dinner, why don’t you try to reverse your luck by inviting him?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Make dinner for him. Every man adores a home-cooked meal.’

  ‘Even when it’s burnt scrambled eggs?’ The thought of cooking fills me with horror.

  Lucy laughs. ‘No, my sweet, I shall cook for you both and he’ll never have to know. I’ll make a delicious meal and drop it off at your house. You can pass it off as your own. And who knows, if you get lucky I won’t even have to worry about afters.’ This last word said with a chuckle and probably a leer.

  ‘Dinner? At my place?’ God, now there’s something I haven’t done for at least five years.

  ‘Yes. It’s perfect. If I were you, I’d drop in and ask him just as soon as you’re back on your feet. He’ll be over the moon.’

  By Friday I figure Si is doing just about okay, or at least okay enough not to need me on permanent standby, but I still feel incredibly fragile. I know I should be going back to the shop, but if Lucy starts being all warm and maternal towards me, I’ll probably just lose it.

  But by Friday afternoon the guilt takes over, and I do go in to Bookends, and everything’s fine. Lucy’s fine. Bill and Rachel have been working like demons, and Lucy’s so busy chatting up the regulars she doesn’t really have time to fuss over me as she normally would, which is truly something of a relief.

  But then the shop suddenly empties, and Lucy puts down a teapot and flings her arms around me, and I bite my lip to stop the full flood of emotion. ‘What are you doing here? I told you not to come in until Monday.’ She peers at me closely. ‘Cath, my love, you look terrible, you ought to be in bed. You’re all pale and slight.’

  Pale and slight. Why is Lucy the only person who could get away with calling me pale and slight? It brings a smile to my face and Lucy says, ‘That’s better. Why don’t you sit down, I’ll make a fresh pot of tea, and then I think it’s back to bed for you, young lady.’

  Half an hour later, I push open the door of the estate agent’s and, much like a Wild West saloon, the room goes quiet as five pairs of eyes eye me up and down, presumably assessing how much I would be willing to spend.

  The silence lasts a second. A second that is evidently enough for them to realize I won’t be buying that eight-bedroom house in Aberdare. Nor even the three-bedroom conversion in Greencroft. Nope. I am not a buyer to get excited about.

  I have never seen the office this busy before. Five men seated behind five large, trendy beech desks, all talking into their phones, some of them managing to conduct conversations into their mobiles at the same time. And these men all look identical. All short, young and dark, neatly packaged in slick dark suits, their eyes constantly roaming, their voices filled with a confidence their age would not suggest.

  And then I see James, right at the back, looking completely out of place, with his laid-back manner, lazy smile and tousled light brown hair.

  ‘Can I help you?’ the bimbo-esque receptionist inquires. I smile and shake my head. James wipes the smile from his face and looks at me sternly as I walk towards the back of the office to talk to him, trying to ignore the eyes that appear to be watching my every move.

  ‘Hello.’ His voice is guarded. ‘What can I do for you, Cath?’ Oh God. Have I blown it? Have I been so completely stupid and blown it? I look at his arm where the sleeve is rolled up, exposing strong muscles and light brown hair, and my stomach lurches as I realize that I do, in fact, desire this man.

  That I have not felt desire for anyone for a very long time. And that I cannot blow it again. I bite my lip as I start to speak.

  ‘Well…’ I’m nervous, and I don’t want to blurt out a dinner invitation in front of the receptionist, who has left her desk at the front and is hovering near by, pretending to look for something.

  Thankfully James picks up on my discomfort, and he ushers me into a room at the back of the office, where there’s a large sofa, and I sit down as he stands in front of me and raises an eyebrow, still as cold as before.

  ‘James,’ I say. ‘I have to apologize. I don’t know why things come up every time we try to get together, but I feel terrible about it and I was just passing and…’ I am about to ask him for dinner, but I can’t quite manage it. ‘… and I just wanted to come in and say how sorry I am.’

  ‘Yes?’ James looks up sternly as the receptionist hovers by the sofa, all pretence having gone out the window.

  ‘Just wondering if you wanted coffee?’ she says brightly, and I say no, because there is something very disconcerting about the way she just appeared when something interesting was being said. Reluctantly she walks back to the front of the office,
and James waits until she’s safely ensconced behind her desk and out of earshot before continuing.

  ‘God, Cath,’ he sighs. ‘This is just so exhausting. All I’m trying to do is take you out for dinner and you’re just making it so bloody difficult for me.’

  ‘I… er…’ I’m floored. I don’t know what to say, and the emotion that I’ve been suppressing is suddenly threatening to spill out all over this lovely white sofa. I try to blink back the tears that well up out of nowhere, but they don’t go away.

  ‘Cath?’ James looks concerned, and sits down next to me, trying to look into my eyes, which are busy failing to stop the tears trickling down my cheek. ‘Jesus, Cath. You’re not okay, are you?’ And his voice is so gentle, so caring, that I find myself doing an enormous hiccup and then the hiccup turns into sobbing, and I’m reduced to a wailing heap on the sofa.

  I’m aware that this is the most exciting thing everyone in the office has ever seen at work, but he stands up and pulls the door closed, and when he comes back he sits next to me and rubs my back, just as I did with Si.

  And it works. It is soothing and calming, and after a while, when the sobbing has gone back to being merely hiccuping, I take a deep breath and James says, ‘Can you talk about it?’

  I start to shake my head, but then the tears start rolling down my cheeks, and I know that I can’t keep this to myself any more. And I know it’s selfish, I know it isn’t about me, but there is nobody I can confide in, and I need someone to support me.

  I wouldn’t tell Lucy. Nor Josh. They are our closest friends, and it is up to Si to tell them, but I trust James, I don’t know why. Perhaps because that night we saw Josh and Portia together he never asked about it, was so obviously not interested in the potential for gossip. I’m sure that whatever I say to him will go no further, and that I just cannot keep this to myself any longer.

  And slowly the story comes out. I don’t refer to Si by name. A friend is what I say, because it makes me feel as if I am still protecting Si, although it is clear from what I say, from the closeness of our friendship, that it could only ever be Si.

  I talk about the helplessness I feel; about the fact that this is not supposed to happen to someone like him, not supposed to happen to one of my best friends. I tell him what I told Si, about it being a virus, about people living with it for years and years, but then I tell him that I’ve also seen the films, seen the photographs, and that however far we have come, is AIDS not the inevitable outcome?

  And as I talk about it, I picture Si, frail, skinny, hollowed-out cheeks, and I start to cry all over again.

  ‘Can I make a suggestion?’ James says gently, quietly, still rubbing my back until I am calm again. ‘I think that first of all you should also go to see someone. I don’t know what exists for friends and family of people with HIV, but there are bound to be groups, counsellors, people who can talk to you, help you, because your friend isn’t the only one who’s suffering, and you need to learn to deal with it as well.’

  I nod mutely.

  ‘But you’re the only one who knows right now, is that right?’ I nod. ‘Do you think your friend is planning to tell more people? Because it’s a hell of a burden to shoulder on your own.’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think he’s thought that far ahead.’

  ‘Where is he now?’

  ‘Oh shit.’ I check my watch and stand up, grabbing my bag. ‘He must be home from the hospital. I’ve got to go.’

  ‘You’re sure you’re okay?’

  I nod, heading for the door.

  ‘Cath?’ I turn just as I’m stepping out. ‘You know that if you ever need to talk, you can just pick up the phone or come over.’

  ‘You know, James, you’re amazing. I don’t know what to say, thank you just doesn’t seem enough.’

  He smiles. ‘Don’t be silly, that’s what friends are for,’ and he leans forward and kisses my cheek, squeezing my arm at the same time. I walk into the street and go home to phone Si, having completely forgotten that I was supposed to have proposed dinner.

  Chapter twenty-seven

  The nights are not good. Si seems to get far more frightened at night, and among the many books he’s bought are first-person stories of people living with AIDS, or people who have lost loved ones to AIDS.

  He reads, nightly, about watching people you love die a horrible, painful death. He reads about people who go blind, contract tuberculosis, Kaposi’s sarcoma. And when he reads these stories, although he says it helps him to feel not quite so alone, he cannot help the terror striking.

  During the daytime I’m there, on the end of the phone, to keep him sane, to remind him of what the doctor told him at the clinic: that at last there are effective treatments, that the average prognosis, before people became ill, used to be ten to twelve years, but that now, with these new treatments, that has been significantly extended.

  You, I say repeatedly to Si, will be around for years. Twenty or thirty at least. And I don’t just say this to make him feel better, I say it because I genuinely believe it. I say it because if Si refuses to be positive about this, then someone else will have to do it for him and that someone will be me.

  So, as I say, the daytimes are not quite so bad. During the day we even manage to have occasional conversations in which the words HIV or AIDS don’t even figure. But it’s during the night that he gets the fear. During the night when he phones me up, either crying softly, or the weight of the fear pressing down on him so much he can hardly speak, just needing to know that someone is there for him.

  Lucy asked me yesterday if everything was okay with Si, because he hasn’t returned her calls. What could I say? I told her that he was fine, very busy, and that I hadn’t spoken to him much either, and then I busied myself with ringing a wholesaler to stop her asking any more questions.

  And I ring Si when I get home and ask him whether he’s thought any more about telling Josh and Lucy. This, apparently, is one of the issues the doctor brought up in his first counselling session. Whom he should tell, and how.

  Si has decided, he tells me, that he does want Josh and Lucy to know because we, after all (and at this point he puts on a cheesy American accent), are his family of choice. He hasn’t, on the other hand, decided quite how to tell them, but is thinking of throwing some kind of dinner party, a miniature version of the film Peter’s Friends, to break the news. Except, he says, right now he can’t think of anything more terrifying.

  His real family, he says, do not need to know. They live far away, they wouldn’t understand, and it took them years to come to terms with the fact that he’s gay, never mind being diagnosed as having HIV to boot. ‘What would be the point?’ he says. ‘If I’m not ill, what’s to tell?’ And I believe him when he says he is doing the right thing.

  He has not taken drastic steps to change his life, not yet. He has not done any of the courses, or started regular counselling, but he has been to the clinic, had his CD4 count checked to measure the strength of his immune system, and had his first Viral Load Test to measure the amount of virus in the blood.

  At the moment his Viral Load is huge, but apparently that is to be expected, given that he has contracted the virus so recently, or at least any time between July and October. It will take a while for his immune system to settle down. But, all in all, so far, so good. He is fine.

  After the tests at the clinic, walking up the street, he told me he saw Portia. Another time he would have spoken to her, another time when he had not been leaving the HIV clinic, had forgiven her the affair with Josh.

  That day, he said, he couldn’t face her. He didn’t have the patience or the will to pretend to be nice, to be normal, and he didn’t want her asking what he was doing there.

  Was it definitely her, I asked? Yes, he laughed. There’s no mistaking Portia, so he ducked into a doorway at the hospital and turned his back until she had passed, praying he didn’t feel a tap on his shoulder; praying he hadn’t been spotted.

  ‘I suppose, at s
ome point,’ he says wearily, ‘everyone will have to know. How do you explain sudden rigorous hygiene, washing your hands every time you touch an animal, or washing fruit and vegetables scrupulously?’

  ‘You could always try telling them you’re pregnant,’ I offer, grateful for the laughter that ensues.

  It is a Thursday night and Si has come over to watch Portia’s series. We have ordered a Chinese takeaway, as we have always done, and Si is bemoaning the fact that we’ve slipped these last few weeks and have, you might say, somewhat lost the plot.

  ‘How much do you want to bet,’ Si smirks, just as the titles start, ‘there’s a new character called John, or Joe, or Jason, something like that, and he’s a local estate agent with a crush on Katy? Oh, and he’s a fabulously talented artist on the side.’

  ‘Oh fuck off.’ I throw a cushion at him and he ducks, chuckling, but it’s true, the thought has occurred to me, particularly because I have managed successfully to avoid Portia for quite a few weeks now, not returning her calls, pretending to be out when I listen to her voice on my answer machine. She may well take her revenge via the television programme.

  And then we both settle down to watch. Jacob and Lisa are having marriage problems, but, astoundingly, Jacob hasn’t turned to Mercedes’s arms for comfort.

  ‘Well, he couldn’t in the TV series, could he?’ Si sniffs. ‘Mercedes is an angel who could never do anything as evil as split up a marriage.’

  No, in the series Mercedes is there to offer support to Jacob, a shoulder to lean on, although naturally everyone gets the wrong impression.

  ‘Oh shit.’ I turn to Si in the commercial break. ‘Have we got it horribly wrong? Do you think we’ve completely misinterpreted everything?’

  ‘Jesus,’ Si says, turning to me. ‘I don’t know. I mean, Portia would never portray herself as the marriage wrecker on TV, but…’ he says, tailing off.

  ‘Then again,’ he says, ‘what was she doing at Josh and Lucy’s all the time? Remember all those times you pitched up to see Lucy, and Portia was sitting at the kitchen table, being all smug?’