‘Very funny. I was hoping you’d give me some ideas,’ I wheedled. ‘What’s that meal you do with beef in wine?’
‘Beef in Wine.’
‘Right. Can you let me have the recipe, or do you think it’s too advanced for me?’
‘There is no “recipe”. I just bung stuff together.’
‘Can you be a bit more specific?’ I asked, sensing the beginning of a thaw. ‘I don’t think this is the time for experimentation.’
‘What you really want is for me to come over and cook it for you, don’t you?’ she accused, but I could hear the smile in her voice.
‘No, of course not. No. Yes. Would you? I know I’m pathetic but I can’t risk poisoning my editor.’
Having established that her evening engagement didn’t begin until 8.30, we reached the following compromise. Zoe would come here early, bringing the prepared casserole, which would only require reheating, and stay for a pre-dinner drink with Owen and Diana. It was up to me to provide some sort of (bought) dessert, and cook a pan of rice to accompany the beef. It was felt that I could be trusted this far.
Zoe’s side of the catering arrangements passed off without a hitch. In fact I couldn’t help noticing something slightly triumphant in her performance as the put-upon girlfriend. She had even thought to bring half a dozen candles, which she planted around the room to take the edge off my uncompromising central light. I had borrowed the small Formica table from the communal kitchen, leaving a note explaining its absence, and the West Indians downstairs had provided me with a pair of upright chairs and a tablecloth to disguise the Formica.
The only disagreement was over napkins.
‘Paper serviettes are naff,’ Zoe declared, watching me lay the table.
‘Even bought ones? They’re not nicked from the Wimpy or anything.’
‘Naff,’ she insisted.
‘Bollocks.’
‘Linen or nothing.’
‘I haven’t got any linen. What do you expect me to do, cut up a shirt?’
‘I’m only telling you.’ She smiled, pleased to have jangled my lower-middle-class nerves.
‘Look, I’m not interested in that etiquette horseshit,’ I snapped. ‘Dry sherry and fish knives and elbows off the table. It’s all horseshit.’
‘Oh fish knives are totally naff,’ Zoe agreed. ‘Everyone knows that.’
The Goddards were late – even owen’s perfect manners were no match for Diana’s unpunctuality. I had a feeling they had just had words about it moments before, as they greeted me with the artificial bonhomie of people stifling a row.
‘I’ve been looking forward to this for ages,’ Diana said brightly as we brushed cheeks. Zoe gave me a sardonic glance to let me know that my lie about the spur-of-the-moment arrangements had been duly noted.
They were complimentary about the transformed surroundings, which looked much less squalid by candlelight. They were charming to Zoe and dismayed that she wouldn’t be joining us for dinner. I could tell that Zoe was slightly intimidated by Diana, who was dressed in what could only be described as a ‘gown’ of slippery silk, a velvet scarf and high-heeled boots. She must have looked as incongruous as a peacock in Alma Road, and yet she carried it off with complete conviction. I had forgotten to warn Zoe that Diana was the sort of woman who wore high heels to peg out the washing. Owen was in his usual unassertive shades of blue and beige, and Zoe and I were, frankly, a bit grubby from our exertions in the kitchen. Zoe’s jeans had taken a direct hit from the beef in wine during a bumpy cab ride from Battersea, which hadn’t improved her mood.
As well as wine and chocolates, Owen was carrying a bundle of magazines and journals – recent copies of the TLS, Publishing News and The London Review of Books, filched from Kenway & Luff. He seemed to be under the impression that I was interested in the international literary scene, whereas it wasn’t mere poverty that kept me from buying these papers. I had the unpublished writer’s natural aversion to news of others’ success. If a new book was well reviewed I was jealous: if it was slated I was furious that inferior work was reaching the bookshops. Nothing I read in these journals could ever please me, but I was touched that Owen had bothered, and that I should be the focus of this continued thoughtfulness.
Because of the Goddards’ late arrival, there was only time for one quick drink before Zoe had to leave for her date with Nigel. I hoped Diana wouldn’t say anything that revealed a prior knowledge of his existence. Something told me that Zoe wouldn’t take kindly to the idea that her personal life had been a topic of conversation between us. I needn’t have worried, of course: Diana would never have been indiscreet.
When Zoe left I escorted her as far as the first landing.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘Lovely,’ she said. ‘I practically fancy her myself.’
‘Oh ha ha,’ I said, shaken by her acuity. ‘I meant how do you think it’s going?’
‘It’d go a lot better if you relaxed a bit and dropped that phoney laugh.’
‘I’m not doing that, am I?’
‘Yes. Stop trying to make an impression. Just pretend they’re nobodies – like me.’
‘Oh don’t be like that,’ I pleaded. ‘Look, come back and stay the night here if you can get away. Make some excuse,’ I urged her. ‘Get a cab. I’ll pay.’
‘I may not want to get away,’ she replied. Having never met Nigel, I’d come to think of him in the same light as a doddery old relative whose whims have to be indulged: tiresome, but not threatening. Occasional reminders of his superiority always brought me up short.
‘No, of course not,’ I said humbly.
Zoe checked her watch. ‘Rice needs another nine minutes. Don’t stir it any more or it’ll go all claggy. And put the casserole dish in to soak afterwards or you’ll never get it clean.’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll get all the pans scrubbed while you’re having hot sex with Nigel,’ I reassured her.
‘It’s your party,’ she retorted.
Back in my room, Owen and Diana had disposed themselves as comfortably as possible – Diana semi-reclining on the bed, while Owen martyred himself in the unsprung armchair. A comfortable, marital silence had descended, broken only by the clatter of rain on the window. This reminded me that I’d left a carton of anchovy-stuffed olives on the window ledge to keep cool, so I retrieved these, and left Owen and Diana to help themselves while I went to tackle the rice. I turned down Diana’s offer of assistance in case standards of hygiene in the communal kitchen impaired her appetite. I could just imagine the trailing silk of her dress sticking to the greasy walls. I don’t know why I was being so particular: she had, after all, been known to serve gritty meringue to a Great Novelist.
I was intercepted in the kitchen doorway by the deaf Polish lady in a state of extreme agitation. She was brandishing the note I had written to explain the removal of the table, its whereabouts and the likely duration of its absence.
‘Vot is this?’ she demanded. ‘Vere is the table?’ And I had thought my note a model of clarity!
‘I’ve just borrowed it for the evening. I’ve got some people over for dinner.’ I pointed at the frothing pan of rice. I wasn’t convinced she’d heard me.
‘You cannot take the table. I need to make my meal.’ She held up a string bag of earthy potatoes. ‘How can I cut these without a table?’ It was true that the room offered few other surfaces for food preparation apart from the draining board, piled with wet crockery, and the top of the fridge, which at five foot was rather too high for her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, more loudly. ‘It’s only for one evening. I hardly ever use the kitchen the rest of the time.’
‘You cannot take this table away,’ she repeated. Under her wrathful eye I rescued the saucepan from the hob and flopped the rice – now a milky slurry – into a sieve. It reminded me of puddings I had refused to eat as a child. ‘I’ll put the table back as soon as we’ve finished eating. Less than an hour,’ I said, tapping my watch.
‘I will go and see the landlady,’ she insisted, and withdrew, still chuntering.
I remembered now that I hadn’t salted the water, so I shook a few grains into the sieve and gave it a stir, then transferred the resulting pulp to a bowl. To my relief the beef casserole, in which I had played no part, was perfect.
Owen and Diana had heard the end of my exchange with the Polish lady and were discussing the feasibility of eating off our laps. ‘It is very difficult to reason with the hard of hearing,’ Diana said. ‘I used to have the same trouble with Herman.’
‘Herman was away for a couple of days last week,’ said Owen. ‘We assumed he was recovering from a binge at Frankfurt, but it turned out that he’d been in hospital having a cancerous mole removed. We all felt a bit guilty for having enjoyed ourselves so much when he wasn’t there.’
‘I suppose you were doing madly rebellious things like sending books out first class and leaving lights on,’ said Diana, helping herself to a spoonful of rice gloop.
‘Oh yes,’ said Owen. ‘We even turned the thermostat up to the legal minimum.’
‘Oh my God,’ said Diana. ‘Expect reprisals.’
We had just started eating, and I was parrying compliments about the beef, when there was a knock at the door. The Polish woman, come to repossess the table, no doubt. ‘Excuse me,’ I said calmly to Owen and Diana. Somehow their presence guaranteed that charm and diplomacy would prevail. Smile in place, I opened the door, to show that we were in the middle of our meal and therefore not quite ready to decommission the table. My smile died on my lips.
Gerald stood there, drenched, rainwater streaming from his parka. He was carrying a large shabby rucksack, and there was an ominous air of vagrancy about him.
‘Hello,’ he said, from deep within his hood. ‘The front door was open so I came straight up. It’s a bit wet out there.’ He took two steps into the room and put down his rucksack. Within seconds a pool of water had formed around it.
‘Gerald – what are you doing here?’ I said, powerless to halt his advance.
‘Peggy’s changed the locks,’ he replied.
She wasn’t the first of his ‘girlfriends’ to choose this method of signalling the end of a relationship, which struck me as too much of a coincidence. I wondered if someone other than Gerald might have picked up earlier, more subtle clues to dwindling affection. He had now penetrated too far into the room to be evicted unintroduced and Owen had, of course, stood up in polite readiness.
‘This is my brother, Gerald,’ I said helplessly. ‘This is Owen and Diana Goddard. Owen’s the editor who’s helping me with my book.’
Gerald held out a dripping hand.
‘Very nice to meet you,’ said Owen.
‘We’ve heard lots about you,’ added Diana.
Gerald looked wary.
‘Why didn’t you go to Mum and Dad’s?’ I asked, unable to bite back this inhospitable sentiment.
‘I did, but they were out,’ he said, starting to unzip his parka. ‘Anyway, I thought I might as well pick up the ten pounds you owe me. Since I’m short of cash.’
That sodding tenner. I cursed myself for not having returned it the minute I was solvent. Now Owen and Diana, who had no way of knowing that this footling loan predated their generous gift by some months, would think I was a pathological scrounger.
‘Here,’ I said, fumbling the money out of my wallet, all fingers and thumbs in my haste to cancel this squalid debt. ‘Do you need any more? How much do you want?’ No price was too high if it secured his immediate departure.
‘It’s OK, I don’t need any more,’ he replied, hanging his parka over the corner of the wardrobe door, where it continued to hold its Gerald-shape, stiff-armed and round-shouldered. Underneath it he was wearing a pair of suit trousers, soaking from the knees down, and a Fair Isle pullover, perhaps knitted by Peggy in happier days. ‘If I could just stay here for tonight . . . It’s a bit late to be looking for new accommodation.’ He glanced at the blackened windowpane on which the rain was still beating remorselessly.
‘The thing is, Gerald,’ I began, wondering how best to phrase my objection. There was still a chance that Zoe might decide to come back after all, and the possibility of sex, however remote, wasn’t something to be relinquished lightly.
‘You could always come back with us,’ said Diana, an offer which was immediately seconded by Owen. ‘We’ve got a spare room.’
That settled it. There was no way I was letting Gerald squat at Aysgarth Terrace until they were forced to change the locks. The thought of it triggered a defensive flood of adrenalin.
‘No, no, of course you must stay here, Gerald,’ I said. ‘You can’t wander the streets on a night like this.’
‘Thanks.’ His gaze fell on the casserole dish, on the table between Owen and Diana, who had now tentatively resumed eating. ‘That smells nice.’
‘It is nice,’ Diana confirmed. ‘There’s plenty left.’
‘It’s beef,’ I said to Gerald by way of deterrent. ‘Aren’t you a vegetarian?’
‘Not a hundred per cent,’ said Gerald. ‘I’m about eighty-five per cent vegetarian.’ He dragged the armchair up to the table and perched on the arm, expectantly. I went out to the kitchen in search of a fourth plate, with the sense of the dinner party slipping away from me. I had to excavate one from the ooze of greasy water and rice at the bottom of the sink and wash it up. There was no tea towel, so I dried it on the curtain in a fit of spite.
When I rejoined the others the food had lost most of its heat, giving Owen and Diana the excuse they needed to ditch the rice. Gerald was droning on about his preparations for a charity fun-run. He had even produced a sponsorship form for Owen to sign. ‘I started off doing two miles twice a week, for a month, then I went up to three miles three times a week, then five miles five times a week, no, four times a week, then six miles three times a week, with a ten-mile run on Saturdays and now I’m up to two ten-mile runs a week and a half-marathon on Sundays.’
‘You must be very committed,’ said Owen politely.
‘It’s just a question of building up gradually,’ Gerald said, helping himself to beef with a surprising lack of restraint for someone only fifteen per cent carnivorous. ‘Now ten miles seems like nothing. I walked here all the way from Purley tonight, and I’m not even out of breath.’
I watched him carefully dissecting the stew, winkling out any mushrooms and piling them on the side of the plate. His childhood food prejudices were all still intact. Now, at least, he allowed the rejected items to remain within reasonable proximity to the rest of the meal, and no longer flipped them onto the mat.
‘You put us to shame,’ said Owen. ‘Diana has been known to drive to the pillar box on the corner of our road to post a letter.’
‘It’s just because I’m always in such a rush!’ she protested. ‘But I admit, I am not terribly fit. When I gave up smoking I thought I’d done my bit, really.’
‘I could draw up a personal running plan for you,’ Gerald offered.
Owen and I burst out laughing. ‘Somehow I can’t see Diana pounding the pavements of Dulwich in a tracksuit,’ he said.
‘Do you even own a pair of trainers?’ I asked her.
She confessed that she didn’t. ‘Jogging always strikes me as a bit lonely. If I was forced to do exercise I’d rather do something sociable like tennis.’
‘Miss Joan Hunter Dunn,’ I said, and she stuck her tongue out at me.
‘It doesn’t have to be lonely,’ Gerald pressed on, undaunted. I wondered if I would ever get the conversation back on track. ‘There are clubs you can join. That’s how I met Peggy.’ We observed a moment or two of respectful silence.
‘People do say exercise is as addictive as drugs,’ said Diana, sceptically.
‘It’s better than any drug,’ Gerald declared, through a mouthful of stew. ‘I was on antidepressants for a year before I took up running again, and now I don’t need them at all hardly.’
‘
I never knew that,’ I said, surprised into contributing. ‘What were you on antidepressants for?’
‘Depression,’ said Gerald.
Owen and Diana murmured sympathetically.
‘But I’m fine now. This thing with Peggy’s a bit of a setback, obviously. And being homeless. But as long as I keep up the running . . .’
I had an image of Gerald, loping off into the night, condemned to keep moving for all eternity to outrun his sorrows. I began to gather the plates, all empty now apart from drifts of inedible rice and Gerald’s mushrooms. I was reluctant to abandon Owen and Diana in this conversational dead end, but short of dragging Gerald with me there was nothing I could do. I tasted again that bitter brew of shame and protectiveness that was my inevitable lot as Gerald’s brother.
On the top of the fridge sat a chocolate soufflé, still in its packaging and not quite defrosted. Ice crystals bloomed on its surface like the first flowering of mould on a loaf. It had obviously been stored on the slant as the topping had slid to one side. As I tried to peel away the plastic shell without demolishing the pudding, I heard the clip-clop of Diana’s heels. Suddenly I saw the kitchen, the soufflé, the rice, the serviettes, Gerald, the whole ghastly evening through Diana’s eyes, and felt such a crippling sense of inferiority that I could hardly bring myself to turn round and face her. If she looks at me with even a trace of sympathy, I thought, I will never, ever go and see her again.
But all she said was, ‘Where shall I put this dish?’ – an entirely functional query, uninflected by knowingness, or amusement, or that feminine archness which in my present mood would have been like a knife in the ribs.
‘Just here,’ I said, clearing a space on the hob before resuming my struggle with the soufflé. The fact that she had passed this little test wasn’t quite enough to restore me to full confidence.
‘You haven’t called round for a while,’ she said, with a casualness that sounded almost rehearsed. ‘The twins have been asking where you are.’
This was patently bollocks. The twins had barely registered my existence, except as an occasional deflector of the full beam of maternal attention.
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