‘Because I wasn’t, when I was with you,’ he said, and like a girl, his compliment thrilled me.
We were the only ones left. The barman ran a twist of tea towel around the inside of a glass. He switched the music to his choice.
‘So,’ Adam said. ‘My mother.’
‘Yes, of course,’ I said, ‘I will,’ and I was excited, despite myself, at our progress through the protocols of courtship; in the abstract, at least. ‘Won’t that be difficult, though. Or odd?’
‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘And—I’ve got you something.’
‘A present?’
‘Well, yes.’
He handed me a box. Inside was a thin gold chain hung with a tiny oval pendant. I raised it on my fingertip and saw that it was engraved with the markings from his lighter, though the strokes were simpler. I thought of a teardrop this time.
‘It’s for when we’re not together,’ he said.
‘It’s beautiful,’ I replied and I kissed him, but then there was a sound at the top of the stairs, the high calls and ragged step of the very drunk and we stopped, for, fact remained, we were doing something we shouldn’t have been, and didn’t want to get caught at it.
The staircase was made of steep, uneven stone. The white point of a shoe appeared, then a great ripple of opalescent satin and a bride stepped into the room.
Around her came two bridesmaids in draped lilac, eager for the bar, and finally the men.
‘Watch out,’ she said, as one of them stepped on the edge of her gown.
‘Champagne, shall we? Or shots?’ said the first girl and the barman adjusted his demeanour for her, a potentially single woman of a suitable age. He gave a little tug at the bottom of his waistcoat, took up a shaker for no reason.
‘Hel, d’you want a shot?’ the bridesmaid called, again.
‘Fizz for me,’ the bride replied. Her husband wore a blown rose buttonhole and a tie in the bridesmaids’ shade. He took her round the waist and held her there while he thumbed the keyboard of his phone with his free hand. She waited, looking around her with an air of benevolent privilege.
‘Can you turn the music up?’ the second bridesmaid asked. Her hair was a mass of connected braids. ‘We want to dance!’ but the barman was more interested in the friend, so she span off into the middle of the room, calling out little phrases of the song when she knew them. A man with a full beard and a rubber ring of fat around his middle turned a long low twist in front of her, up and down he went, moving his hands to his thighs, after a while, with the strain of it. The girl whooped and the bride watched on, while her husband texted.
‘Is anyone going to help me with these drinks,’ the woman at the bar called out. The last man in the group came over. He nodded at Adam.
‘How was the day?’ Adam asked.
‘Decent, all in all,’ the man replied. He gave the matter more thought. ‘Yeah. Good turnout. I’m the best man,’ he said. ‘And the brother.’
The cork popped and everyone turned to the noise. The barman smiled down at the bottle, aslant in its tea towel.
‘Can we offer you a drink?’ the bride called across to us suddenly. ‘I can see we’re interrupting,’ she said, with a kittenish look.
‘That would be lovely,’ Adam replied – I don’t know why – good manners, perhaps. The barman reached for two more glasses and kept his next pour short.
‘In fact, let us,’ Adam said. ‘Another bottle, please. Congratulations to you both.’
We raised our glasses and the bride approached. She pulled her dress to the side and sat on a stool, her legs lost in the wedge of ruched material.
‘Cheers,’ she said. ‘Thanks for that.’ She bent a little towards us, and said, in a whisper: ‘So, does it change things then?’
I looked at her stupidly.
‘Being married,’ she said. She nodded at my hand which lay on his thigh. I wore a Tiffany engagement ring that Stefan had chosen, and a platinum band. I felt a little thrill at her mistake.
‘I know I feel different,’ she told us, ‘already. At least I think I do.’ Her stare was fixed but lazy and I’d seen that look on David and wondered if she was high.
‘Oh, I’m not sure. What would you say, darling?’ I said, in a playful voice. I dropped my cheek onto his shoulder and rubbed my face there, in the gap beneath his jaw. I smelt warm skin, tobacco, day-old hair. Somewhere under the booze, it seemed funny, a game, at the least; perhaps more.
‘Go on,’ she said, leaning closer. Her chest and arms twinkled with some reflective cream or powder. Her teeth were scrubbed and even, as pearly as her gown. ‘Tell us your secret.’ She lifted her shoulders to relieve a pinch somewhere in the boning of the dress and a ledge of bust emerged above it.
Beside me Adam was unreadable and I found I didn’t know how to reply. Her group had reassembled at the bar and the dancer mopped his beard with a napkin after the exertion of it and watched us. He whispered to the best man next to him.
‘You’re getting something right. I can see that much,’ she said, and gave a sloppy wink and then a long, low, rather accomplished whistle. ‘Share the wealth.’
‘People either work or they don’t,’ Adam said flatly, in the end.
The bride looked disappointed.
‘Oh right.’
‘Helly,’ one of the women called.
‘What?’ she said wildly, looking back over her shoulder, as far as the constraints of her dress would allow. When she turned to us, her expression was wiped clear. ‘I probably better go.’
‘Congratulations, anyway,’ Adam said again.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ she replied, and slid off her stool.
‘Let’s drink up,’ he said.
‘What’s the matter? We’ve got another half-bottle.’
‘I want to leave,’ he said.
‘OK. Let me just go to the loo.’
As I passed, the one with the beard got up and something in his swagger and the way the others watched – covertly, so they thought, though they were far too pissed for that – made me hurry. When I got back, he stood with his arm around Adam, calling across to his friends with a wide-mouthed laugh. He yanked Adam closer, the sides of their bodies bumping, and I saw Adam resist.
‘No need to take offence, mate!’ the man called, ‘I was only asking. Oh, watch out. Here she is.’ I felt a deep hot flush.
‘Let’s go,’ Adam said, when I got to him.
‘Oh, don’t leave,’ called the man. ‘Don’t be silly. I was only messing.’
‘Sorry about him,’ the bride said. ‘Come back here, Dave.’
Dave left us in comic dismay.
‘What did he say?’ I asked.
‘Nothing,’ Adam said.
‘What?’
‘Forget it, Nancy, he’s an arsehole.’
‘Seriously. I want to know.’
‘He said that we couldn’t possibly be married. That we were obviously just fucking,’ Adam said.
‘And what did you say?’
‘Nothing, of course.’
The barman pushed the bill towards us and Adam reached for his wallet.
‘Cash,’ Dave cried from across the room, ‘what did I tell you?’ He held his hand up to be slapped though no one did it. ‘Shut up, you silly bastard,’ I heard the best man say.
‘Come on,’ Adam said.
‘Why should we? I don’t care what he thinks.’
‘Well, I do.’
‘But why?’ I asked.
‘Because it demeans us, Nancy, that’s why.’
‘I’m really sorry,’ the bride said, with an exaggerated grimace, as we left. ‘I hope we didn’t muck up your evening. And thanks for the drink, yeah?’
‘Night night, sleep tight,’ called Dave in a sing-song voice and at that, the whole party collapsed.
‘Adam,’ I said. ‘They were idiots and completely shit-faced.’ In the lift I held his hand, damp with the stress of it. ‘And did you see that dress?’ but something had curdled, nonetheless.
At home, next day, I found that I’d been missed. My family had stalled; they made that plain with their hugs and homemade cards. I was surprised, Stef knows the routine backwards, but it seems there are things only a mother can provide. The fact of the children, in front of me, under my hands, felt, for that second, like bliss. I took my place in the machine of the family and it started up again.
Later, overnight bag emptied and clothes churning in the wash, I went through to the kitchen, ostensibly to write up notes. My hangover jangled and I was less tired than I should have been, but it was dark and hard-edged out there, with the underfloor heating off and just the cupboard spots dropping narrow light onto the work-top. I pressed my hands down into the concrete and slid them out until my arms lay flat, the cold reaching my brain paradoxically as heat. Lou crept up on me. The first thing that I knew of her was her soft voice, close by.
‘Did you find anyone to talk to, Mummy?’ she said. She stood a socked foot on mine.
‘I did,’ I replied.
‘What was her name?’ she asked.
‘Her name was Helen,’ I said.
‘What was she like?’ she asked.
‘Horrible,’ I said and Louisa laughed. ‘Come here. Shall we go through to the others?’
‘In a bit,’ said Lou.
‘How about I make you a hot chocolate first?’
I let her toast marshmallows for her drink, one white, one pink, over the flame of the gas hob on a skewer.
‘Watch out,’ I said, ‘don’t let them drip.’ She sat up before me on the counter and I held her bony knees and enjoyed her total commitment to the task. Her hair was greasy at the roots and a clip had worked its way around the curve of her head and hung uselessly from low down one lank curl.
‘That’s enough,’ I said, as they puckered and burnt. ‘Don’t touch the end.’
I lifted the mug and she eased the marshmallows off with a fork. She took the drink, I saw her eyes refocus above it, and she asked, ‘What’s that?’
‘What’s what?’ I replied. She was looking at the base of my throat and I thought for a terrible moment there was a mark there; a bruise, a thumbprint.
‘This thing,’ she said, and took my pendant, lifting it as far as the chain would allow.
‘Oh,’ I replied. ‘Haven’t you seen it before?’
‘No,’ she said. She turned it over, flipped it back.
‘Probably not. It’s fairly new.’ She nodded. She squeezed it between her fingers and it dulled at her touch.
‘What do you think?’ I said.
‘Pretty,’ she replied. ‘Did Dad get it for you?’
‘I got it for myself. Do you want to have a look?’
‘Yes please,’ she said.
‘You can take it off.’
I turned my back to her and pulled my hair aside. She had some trouble with the catch and I worried for her brittle nails, then she had lifted the necklace away from my chest and up and over my head. She laid the necklace out neatly on the counter.
‘What is that?’ she said. She traced the pattern a couple of times with the tip of her nail.
‘Have a guess,’ I replied.
‘Fire,’ she said decisively. ‘In a forest, or something. It’s a flame.’ Then: ‘I like it. Can I wear it? For tonight?’
‘Of course,’ I said, ‘it will look beautiful on you,’ and I pulled her to me hungrily, gobbling up her warm stale smell.
15
Marie brought her own coffee now, in a tall, black insulated beaker which leaked water from between its walls, leaving a puddle on the arm of my chair that we both ignored. I wanted to tell her that it was the dishwasher, that mine had done the same. She needed to bin it, and start again. Today’s lipstick, though, I liked.
‘So this morning, I wanted to broaden things out, Marie, if you don’t mind. Could we talk a little about your relationship?’
‘Sure,’ she said. ‘If you want.’
‘Would you like to start?’ I said.
‘Oh no,’ she replied. ‘You go. Just ask away.’
A riff on reluctance, a play on the reticent child.
‘Mark, I think you said? How does he feel about your new job?’
She looked down at her lap where her skirt pleated evenly.
‘My job? He thinks it’s good. Yes. He’s pleased.’
‘And does he work in a similar field?’ I asked.
‘He’s in construction,’ she said. She held herself neutral and alert.
‘And do you place a similar emphasis on career, would you say? As a couple?’
She looked at the art over my shoulder, a huge scabbed oil by a local artist of sky, sea and landmass all bled into one.
‘Probably. About the same.’
She liked to make me work, but it takes someone rare to sit out a decent-sized pause. Sure enough, in a bit:
‘I mean, I do work longer hours now and there’s the travel. He doesn’t like that. Or I should say he doesn’t exactly love it.’
I let my face go serious.
‘Though it’s great to have more money coming in,’ she said.
‘So the extra income has made a difference?’
On my pad I drew a little row of £ signs till they no longer looked like themselves, all warped and stunted.
‘Yes. We do more. We eat out. We’ve booked a holiday.’
Marie is taking them places.
‘And how does he get on with your family?’ I asked.
‘He goes to football every weekend with my dad. They’ve done it for years,’ she said, and I looked and I listened, but there was nothing; she has a knack for blankness and I wondered if she was throwing me a line. Marie is not stupid. ‘It’s nice,’ she finished.
‘It is,’ I answered, and thought, who is that lipstick for? And those nice new courts and your Karen Millen suit? It is for her, for now, and some of it for me, and for the audience she imagines she will find, when the future she deserves finally begins. Because it’s not for them, for dear old Dad and Mark at Selhurst Park every Saturday since day dot, enjoying the crowd, looking forward to their pint; oh no, the hop of her toe tells me that, a little too quick, and the smile that gets stuck halfway up one cheek. Still, I let her talk.
‘And what about children?’ I said.
*
Frieda had visited Tara that weekend. I knew things now I didn’t want to know. About the tea they drank together from a fine bone china set that lives high up on a shelf. The way each piece lies snug in dusky velvet until Tara eases it out with a special tool designed for the task and hands it to Frieda to polish with a thin lint cloth. A gift from the wardrobe master at one of her best shows, Free tells me, a wonderful old queer, and her eyes shone at her own infraction but I knew it was a challenge and I let it go. The tea itself is something smoked and floral to be drunk as it is, no milk, very hot. Frieda wasn’t sure at first, but had a taste for it by the end of her second cup, and wants me to buy some for home, if only she can remember the name.
*
‘Children?’ Marie replied. ‘What about them?’
‘I wondered what you thought—Whether you and—’ my eyes dropped to my pad, ‘Mark had discussed it, at all?’
‘No,’ she replied with a high glib tone and a whiff of insolence.
‘You’ve never considered whether you might like to start a family at some point?’ I asked.
‘I’m not even twenty-eight,’ she said, with a chilly look and I wondered if that question had become inappropriate now, even within the therapeutic context.
‘Of course,’ I replied and made a note, but I remembered how it was to be that age, its ruthless singularity.
‘So tell me about your interests, Marie,’ I asked.
She started to reply.
*
‘What did you do?’ I had asked Frieda, ‘over there?’
‘Well we looked at photos and worked through old scripts,’ she replied. ‘She was so beautiful, Mum, when she was
young,’ Frieda said, with a kind of yearning. I heard about Adam’s wife in Shakespeare, in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.
‘Well, I’ve never heard of her,’ I said.
‘Why would you? You know nothing about the stage,’ she replied.
‘And where’s Adam, while all this is going on?’ I asked.
‘Adam?’ she said, as though it were the first time that she’d heard his name.
‘Yes, Adam.’
‘Oh I dunno. Somewhere.’ She watched her finger, held in front of her face, as she looped it through a lock of hair.
*
Marie was talking about a friend and a singing group they might join.
‘Sounds great,’ I said.
Then Frieda had given a private kind of laugh.
‘What?’ I said.
‘He’s actually quite sweet.’
‘Who?’
‘Adam,’ she replied.
‘Sweet?’ I said.
‘Well, he came in, in the end,’ she said. She had already described the room in which they worked – a kind of sitting room for Tara alone, wallpapered in an old-fashioned style, lined with her books and framed artefacts. Ticket stubs and invites. Messages scribbled on bar napkins. All manner of relic and memento. Proof of her experience and depth.
‘He dragged in the old trunk,’ she said, as if I knew of it. ‘And we all got changed into real-life costumes from the stage!’
‘What, all of you?’ I said. ‘I can’t imagine Adam in a dress.’
‘He wore a hat,’ she cried, close to delight, her finger wedged in a tight coil of hair. ‘He played the dowager. We were reading Oscar Wilde. He did this brilliant voice,’ and I had to turn from her, from that scene, in case some of what I felt showed on my face.
‘Well you mustn’t bother them too much,’ I said.
‘It wasn’t bother,’ Frieda replied. ‘Tara said she had a great time and I should definitely come again.’
*
And to Marie, I said, yes, that all sounds good, it is important to have new experiences, to continue to evolve and then I took her back to Mark and what he likes to do, and she told me the gym, certain shows on TV, the pub, and we stalled. She started to pinch, just lightly, at one elbow’s inside crease. Connections are being made.
Love After Love Page 11