by Jo Verity
Sheila was the older sister that Jack never had. He did, in truth, have an older sister – Marion – but, remote and fastidious, Marion had always been completely useless at those critical moments when he’d needed affection, advice or a kick up the pants. She had been there in the flesh but emotionally distanced; on the sidelines, watching everything that was going on without participating in the game. She would have made an excellent nun or driving examiner.
So when Sheila, statuesque and full of fun, had turned up in response to the advert for a receptionist he’d placed in the Western Mail, it had been a revelation to meet a woman who could laugh and hug people, often without any reason. When he and his partner in the new practice had conferred, Dafydd Morgan, who freely admitted that he’d become a dentist for the money and consequent pulling power – a pun which didn’t improve with repetition – wasn’t totally persuaded. ‘Couldn’t we go for someone a bit more…I don’t know…sexy I suppose?’
They came to an arrangement. Jack would choose the receptionist and Dafydd, the two dental nurses.
Jack basked in the cheery warmth that Sheila brought to the practice. And the patients adored her. Often he would be left hanging about in the surgery whilst they stayed in the waiting room, chatting to her about children or holidays. This time wasn’t wasted. After five minutes with Sheila, even the most apprehensive patient would sit confidently in the chair. Dafydd Morgan moved on to higher things – he became a consultant and the rumour was that he’d slept his way to the top – and the vacuous blondes were long gone, but Jack and Sheila, assisted by a series of competent dental nurses, made a great team and the practice flourished.
‘How was your weekend?’ she asked. ‘Weren’t you dancing?’
Jack didn’t like lying to her so went for a non-answer. ‘It was the Mid-Wales Championship.’
‘Any good?’
He shook his head and turned to the matrix of names in the appointment book on the cluttered desk.
Jack found August unsettling. Something about Fay being at home made him jittery. When the children were young, needing to be looked after during those long school holidays, it was a necessity but, as they grew up and no longer required supervision, it unnerved him. What did she do all day while he was working so hard? It was a well-documented phenomenon that holidays precipitated dental problems. The stress and anxiety involved in planning and preparing for vacations led to tooth grinding, which, in turn, caused teeth to crumble and fillings to fall out. Several times he’d treated patients who were on their way to the airport, clutching a passport as he tilted the chair back. Parents took the opportunity to while away aimless summer days by dragging their offspring in for check-ups and orthodontic treatment, as though it were an outing, like going to the cinema.
Throughout the morning, his thoughts wandered away from erupting wisdom teeth and receding gums. He pictured Non, polishing the huge brass doorknocker at The Welcome Stranger Guesthouse or taking feed down to the hen coop. Had she come across his handkerchief yet? Had she thought of him at all as she stripped his bed? Was she sniffing the white sheets to see if the smell of him still clung to them? If roles had been reversed, that was something he certainly would have done. He pondered the events of the weekend as he treated his patients, the memories becoming a soothing mantra, sending him into a reverie.
‘How’s Fay? Haven’t seen her for ages.’ A family acquaintance was in the chair, and Jack tore himself away from Llangwm to make the compulsory small-talk, but it disrupted his train of thought and he was unable to recapture his mood. Instead he pictured Fay, snooping around the house, rifling through his pockets and checking the car for clues. Unfortunately there was the possibility that she might find something incriminating. What if a dog had torn the rubbish bag before the bin men came? Fay would surely demand an explanation for the full carton of eggs and bunch of roses lying on the drive. Then there was the note from Gareth about the car. He remembered scrunching it up but what had he done with it then? Had he shoved it in a trouser pocket without thinking?
In a spare moment, he phoned Fay. ‘D’you fancy meeting for lunch? Try the new Italian? It’s warm enough to sit outside. Come in on the train. You could do a bit of shopping and we could drive home together.’ Even to himself, the suggestion sounded uncharacteristically well thought out but she agreed without comment. He was reassured by her tone. So far he was in the clear and, if he could lure her away from the house for the afternoon, there was no chance that she would be rifling through his belongings. The outlay on a shopping spree could be written off against peace of mind and, once he was home, he would make a thorough check.
Fay was on top form, vivacious and bubbling with good humour. It had slipped Jack’s mind that she was quite a nice-looking woman, in a gingery, freckly way and, as they ordered their meal, he wondered if he had been misinterpreting his recent feelings.
The trip to Paris, after the wedding, had been by way of an experiment, to see whether time spent alone with Fay, in that quintessentially romantic city, might be all it took to reconnect with his wife. The experiment failed but his medical training had taught him that it was foolish to rely on one set of results.
He couldn’t help equating the situation with that of a stalled car. Perhaps all it needed was an emotional spark to jump-start things and he ran through several extreme scenarios, hoping to reignite his feelings for her. How would he feel if she were having an affair? What if she was held hostage by a mad axe-man? What if she were to die? He already knew that this particular ‘what if’ left him feeling nothing. The more excessive the imaginary calamity, the less it touched him but the motoring metaphors took hold and he came to the conclusion that obviously, somewhere along the highways and byways of marriage, they had taken a wrong turn; slipped out of gear; run out of petrol.
Now, sitting opposite her, under the trees, he experienced a stirring of something, somewhere and he wished they were at home. He pictured how it would be in their bedroom, voile curtains billowing in the breeze as they undressed and took a shower together. He imagined the two of them, twisting in the cascade of cool water, lathered and smelling of summer meadows. But by the time they were in the bedroom, drying each other with soft, white towels, Fay had turned into a lithe, dark-haired young woman, butterfly skirt in a crumpled heap on the floor.
As Jack made his way back to work, undulating bosoms and bare midriffs wobbled by. The August sunshine seemed to have blinded the shopping public to its physical inadequacies, depriving them of all modesty. To be fair, there were some nice-looking young women in the crowd, brazenly confident in skimpy dresses or snug tee-shirts. But passing them, and feeling neither stirrings nor regrets, confirmed that he wasn’t merely another middle-aged man in crisis. Non’s loveliness had nothing to do with glossy lips, hair-free legs or an all-over tan. It came from within – he might go so far as to say, from her soul – spilling out to create an aura of goodness around her.
Smiling and humming ‘Handsome John’, he zig-zagged through the crowds, barely preventing himself from dancing his way back to the surgery.
Considering that Jack had been given free rein of the house for a couple of days, Fay was surprised at how tidy it was. Of course he’d been away most of Saturday and had probably spent Sunday in the garden or the shed. This would explain why everything was more or less as she’d left it before she went to Nottingham. After he’d gone to work and she’d cleared the breakfast things, there wasn’t much to be done. The laundry basket was empty, household admin was up to date and Colleen, her cleaning woman, was due tomorrow, so there was no point in dusting. Jack’s phone call, suggesting that they lunch together, was unexpected but welcome. She wondered whether Sheila had put him up to it, although she couldn’t for the life of her think why she would.
Watching him, across the table, she thought how old he looked in the bright, revealing sunlight. His hair was thinning at the crown and his neck was beginning to look scrawny. His beard, too, was peppered with grey and sharp v
ertical creases, which she hadn’t noticed until today, ran down his cheeks. He had worn a neat beard all the time she’d known him. In the early days, he used to say it was to convince patients that he was old enough to be trusted with their teeth. One of her college friends had, rather cruelly, observed that he looked like one of the guests at the Last Supper, but that was mainly due to his fondness for wearing sandals. It hadn’t taken Fay long to change the footwear but the beard had remained.
‘It’s almost two,’ he said, waving to the waiter for the bill. ‘I’d better get back.’
He kissed her cheek and she watched him, tall and loping, disappear into the crush of lunchtime shoppers, before turning in the opposite direction and heading for her favourite department store.
On the train into the city centre, Fay had written a shopping list. Inspired by Isabel’s weekend outfits, she’d decided to re-think her own wardrobe. There was no problem with what she wore to work. As a teacher she had to look smart and feel comfortable yet confident, but there was no call for her work clothes to be stylish or of particularly good quality. In her off-duty hours however, she may have been selling herself short. Perhaps the tee-shirts and slacks should make way for something a little ‘classier’. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but, whatever it was would definitely be in Robertsons – and would undoubtedly be expensive.
The revolving doors swung her into the perfumery and cosmetics department. As she passed between the island counters, the concoction of scents – floral, zesty, exotic – caught in her throat and mixed with the after-taste of her garlicky lunch. Predatory sales assistants, all of whom had gone one step too far in their bid to be noticed, patrolled the area. A young man in black shirt and trousers, lemon yellow tie and braces, advanced towards her, holding out a perfume atomiser. His hair, presumably dyed yellow for some promotion, was drawn up in spikes, not unlike the outer casing of a conker. And he appeared to be wearing mascara. She avoided eye-contact and kept walking, but he called after her. ‘Mrs Waterfield?
She sighed and turned back. Encounters like this were one of the hazards of life as a teacher, and one of the reasons that she preferred to shop further away from home. Nick Morris, one of the maths teachers, had horrified the staff room with the statistic that during a twenty-five year career, a secondary school teacher in an average sized comprehensive school might teach ten thousand different pupils. Furthermore, it was likely that every one of those pupils would remember their teachers, either with affection or hatred, for umpteen years after they had left school.
‘Mrs Waterfield? It’s Neil. Neil Bentley. Remember me?
Why on earth did this lad think she might remember him – or recognise him, come to that? It must be years since he left school and here he was, in heavy disguise. She smiled brightly and held out her hand. ‘Neil. Hello.’ Neil Bentley?
‘Fancy a squirt?’ He grabbed her wrist and sprayed it liberally with ‘Jaune’. She raised it to her nose. ‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘You’ve got to give it a few minutes to mature. Wait for the undertones to surface.
‘You’re clearly an expert.’ She waved her wrist around, marvelling at the stupidity of an education system that imagined Keats and Milton would benefit any of the youngsters that passed through her hands.
‘I often think about King and the band. Those were the days, eh?’ He smiled and nodded, like a man four times his age.
Of course. Besides being a pupil at the school, Neil Bentley had been one of Kingsley’s friends. But he’d looked completely different then – acne and a lot of metal-work in his mouth; played in that dreadful band that used to practise in the garage. The Scourge or something like that. In the end the neighbours got up a petition.
‘What’s he up to at the moment? I kinda lost track.
So had she but she wasn’t ready to confess that to anyone. ‘He’s in Australia. Having a whale of a time.
He laughed. ‘Yeah. I can imagine. And he was a seriously brilliant songwriter.
The young man’s guileless enthusiasm combined with this unexpected reminiscence of her son, caused tears to well up. Neil Bentley’s two-day training in scent retailing had evidently not included instruction on dealing with a tearful woman and he peered down at his trendy trainers.
‘It’s nice.’ Fay sniffed the inside of her wrist and reassembled her smile. ‘I’ll take the small eau de toilette. And why don’t you call in sometime, Neil? We’re still in the same house. We could have a proper chat. Now, I mustn’t hold you up any longer.
She stood on the escalator, looking back over her shoulder at her son’s friend, wondering what Kinsgley was doing. She looked at her watch. It was two-thirty which would make it the early hours of tomorrow morning in Sydney. He might be asleep. Or playing ghastly music in a club. He might not even be in Sydney any more. They hadn’t heard from him for a while, even though they kept emailing, and, all through Dylan’s wedding day, she had clung on to the hope that he would show up.
Jaded, she reached the second floor and meandered from rail to rail, hoping to rekindle her enthusiasm for the task in hand. Hobbs. Bluestocking. East. Great Plains. She wandered from one to another, without any strategy. Maybe she should leave it until Caitlin was with her, although it might be difficult to explain to her daughter what she was looking for. And what was she looking for? This discontent had started when she’d seen how elegant Isabel was looking. It had made her feel frumpy and provincial but, of course, Isabel was tall and thin, with more money than she knew what to do with. It was easy to wear a linen shift dress when you had no hips and next to no bust.
The ‘Hair Zone’ was also located on the second floor. The girl reading a magazine behind the reception desk looked up and caught Fay’s eye. Before she had time to agonise, she was shrouded in a lilac coverall, her hair frothy with shampoo. It was only three weeks since the wedding, when she’d spent goodness knows how much on having her hair trimmed and coloured, so when the young man came to talk to her about what she wanted doing, she was unclear.
‘I could do you a complete re-style?’ he suggested. ‘Something softer? More modern? More casual? Maybe lose a bit of this orange?’ Every sentence ended with an interrogative upturn.
‘Shouldn’t I look at pictures or something?'
‘Leave it to me?'
For a moment she feared he, too, might be one of her past pupils, now hell-bent on wreaking revenge for some imaginary injustice suffered at her hands. But as he chatted away, explaining that he was a Swansea boy and had only lived in Cardiff for a few months, she relaxed, entrusting her hair to his deft fingers, whilst thoughts of Kingsley drifted around in her head.
‘D’you need to brush your hair?’ Jack asked when she arrived at the surgery. ‘You look a bit wind-swept.'
‘I’ve had it re-styled.’ She was relieved that Sheila was in the cloakroom, out of earshot. On the unit there was a hand-mirror, for patients who wanted to inspect their new dentures or orthodontic appliances, and she grabbed it. ‘I think it makes me look a lot younger, don’t you?’ She paused but he didn’t say anything. ‘Obviously not.’ He stared blankly at her and she wondered, not for the first time, if his hearing was going.
Before she could press him further, Sheila popped her head round the door. ‘Your hair looks nice, Fay. Makes you look less…more…more glamorous.’ She smiled. ‘I’m off now. It’s my Tai Chi night.'
It took Jack a further fifteen minutes to tidy up and change out of his tunic. Fay watched, irritated by his slowness, as he double-checked that all the equipment was locked away and set the security alarm. As the years went by, he was going to get even slower. And deafer. Could all that prancing about, shaking bells and beating sticks together, have anything to do with it?
7
‘So what’s he like, Mum?’ Caitlin sat with Fay in the garden. Junior lecturers were expected to take annual leave during August, while the students were on long vacation, and Caitlin was not in her usual rush.
‘Tall. Thin. No, slim.
Light brown hair that looks as if it might go blonde in strong sunshine. Lovely voice. Capable hands. Rather sensuous lips.’ Fay avoided her daughter’s gaze. ‘I don’t know really. He only breezed in and breezed out.’
‘And when’s he coming?’
‘Nothing’s definite. It was only a general invitation to drop in if he was in this part of the world.’ She gave it a couple of seconds. ‘Possibly Saturday week.’
Caitlin took a bulging desk diary from the cotton bag that lay on the grass next to her deckchair, turning the pages. ‘Oh, what a shame. I’m away that weekend.’
‘At the conference? Your father’s been asked to speak at some meeting or another that weekend. Llandrindod Wells I think he said.’
‘I hadn’t heard anything about that one. Maybe it’s just for practitioners. No, I’m going down to Devon to visit Mira.’
Fay was relieved when the conversation turned to Caitlin’s plans. Whenever she spoke about Cassidy, she tended to give out too much detailed information. She would have to watch out for that.
Over the years, she and Laura had thought how satisfactory it would be if their children teamed up. Laura’s daughter, Sadie, had been too unconventional for Dylan and too old for Kingsley but Cassidy and Caitlin were an obvious pairing. Now she wasn’t sure whether she even wanted Caitlin to meet him. Since their midnight encounter, she wasn’t at all sure what she was feeling, or wanting.
As Caitlin was getting into her car, she said, ‘The hair looks great, Mum. Very flattering colour.’
‘Well I like it but your father keeps suggesting I brush it.’
‘He’s not a great one for change, though, is he? What did he say about the leg-waxing? Surely he can’t want you to brush your legs, too.’ Without waiting for answers she sped off towards her waterfront flat.
Fay couldn’t decide what she should do. If Jack and Caitlin were both going to be away on, what she had come to think of as, the ‘Cassidy Weekend’, wouldn’t it appear strange if she pressed the invitation? She hadn’t spoken to Laura since her return from Nottingham, but had written a postcard to thank her for the hospitality, and she was intending to reiterate her invitation a day or two before Cassidy was due to drive to Wales. Knowing that she would be on her own, he might feel that it was inappropriate to call – although what could be inappropriate about calling on an old friend for a cup of tea? Maybe if she included Dylan and Nia in the invitation it would appear more suitable.