There is something reassuring about a well-stocked larder, particularly when you are housebound by foul weather and a broken toe. I had a barn full of firewood, plenty of food and some rather rough wine (Gerald’s pick of the bargain bin at the Spa supermarket) and I felt equal to any siege.
Over lunch (pilchard rarebit Geraldoise) I explained the progress I had made with the insurance company. Gerald’s relief at having dodged the responsibility for this task was touching to behold. While he was in a grateful mood, I went on to outline a possible plan for the disposal of the house. ‘I was thinking we could maybe convert it into two flats – have one each. Then I could sell or let mine and you could go on living there if you want to. Just an idea.’
Gerald pondered this for a moment. ‘Could I have the upstairs?’
‘You can have whichever you want.’
‘Only I don’t want the bother of a garden. And I’d rather be up high for the views.’
I had never considered the suburban roofscape and distant tuft of trees fringing the common as a sight worth cherishing, but Gerald’s criteria for contentment had always been highly individual. ‘I think it might work out well,’ he was saying. ‘I don’t really want to move now that I’ve got this new job.’
‘You’ve got a job!’
‘I’ve got three,’ he said, complacently. ‘I deliver the South London Press to about five hundred houses. And I walk two separate dogs. The way I look at it, I’m being paid to keep fit.’
In the afternoon, while Gerald settled down with a second packet of jelly to watch a repeat of Columbo, I decided to get on the Internet and do some job-hunting of my own, but the computer was misbehaving and I couldn’t get online. I tried to call up the technical helpline but the phone was now dead – the result of a cable coming down in the storm no doubt.
As soon as Columbo was over, before Gerald could get absorbed in the next programme, I decided to tackle the subject of personal hygiene.
‘Do you want a bath, Gerald?’ I asked. ‘You’d be very welcome. Only I was thinking it must be quite a while since you had one.’
Gerald looked interested. ‘If you’re sure there’s enough hot water. I don’t want to be a nuisance.’
‘There’s plenty,’ I insisted. ‘Have a nice deep one. Help yourself to soap and towels.’
‘I think I might do that,’ Gerald said, crumpling up the jelly wrapper and tossing it on the fire, where it flared and shrivelled in a second. ‘What with the pipes bursting, and then camping in fields and stuff, it has been a while.’ He disappeared into the bathroom and presently I heard the thundering of water and the protesting clanks and moans of the pipes.
I was congratulating myself on my handling of this delicate matter, and wondering how soon I could broach the subject of laundry, when there was a loud rapping at the front door.
Carol stood in the conservatory, pumping at a collapsible umbrella to shake off the water. I was so ready to distrust my memory that I immediately assumed I had forgotten yet another dinner date, and was swamped by a wave of guilt. However her rather subdued ‘Hello’, and red-rimmed eyes began to ring alarm bells of a different kind.
‘Carol, what’s up?’ I asked, my glance straying to the small suitcase on wheels beside her.
‘Thank God you’re in,’ she said, pushing past me and parking her luggage at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ve just had a right marital with Jeremy. A real blazer.’ She took off her leather coat and threw it over a hook, letting out a blustery sigh.
‘You haven’t left him?’ I protested.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Not for ever, I don’t suppose. But I’m not going home tonight. You don’t mind me staying here, do you? There aren’t that many people I can descend on at no notice. All my friends are wrapped up with family at weekends.’ There was a poignant silence. ‘Plus, he’ll never find me here. I want him to worry,’ she said spitefully.
‘Of course you can stay,’ I said, thinking that there was something quite charming – innocent, almost – in her assumption that I could be depended upon above all others to come to her aid in a marital crisis. It was a form of compliment, though one that would involve me giving up my bed tonight.
‘Thanks. I knew you wouldn’t turn me out,’ she said, leaning in to hug me. I could feel her cashmere-covered breasts pressing against my ribs.
Gerald chose this moment to come shuffling out of the bathroom in a cloud of vapour, a long towel wrapped up to his armpits. They both recoiled in surprise.
‘Sorry, I didn’t realise you had company,’ Carol stammered, then gave a hoot of laughter as she caught on. ‘Oh, it’s you, Gerald. I didn’t recognise you under all that hair.’
‘Likewise,’ said Gerald, ungallantly.
‘For a moment I thought you must be Chris’s gay lover,’ she went on, forgetting, if she had ever noticed, that Gerald did not appreciate banter of this sort. A blush of deep discomfort bloomed over his neck and shoulders and he stumped upstairs, shaking his dripping locks.
‘It was an unscheduled visit,’ I said. ‘A bit like yours.’ I led her into the sitting room and killed the TV which was still chuntering away. The remote was sticky with jelly thumbprints.
‘What’s wrong with your foot?’ Carol demanded, noticing my sawn-off boot for the first time.
‘I stubbed – broke – my toe on the table leg,’ I replied, ashamed to be so immobilised by this unmanly injury.
Carol pulled a face. ‘Nasty.’ Then she brightened. ‘So you wouldn’t have been going out anywhere tonight anyway? That makes me feel better.’ She sank down onto the couch where Gerald had lately been sitting, banked up some cushions, and curled her legs up underneath her, with her feline gift for making herself comfortable.
‘So what’s this domestic about, then?’ I asked.
‘Oh, everything and nothing. He thinks I’m having an affair, which I’m not at present, but I bloody soon will be if he doesn’t shape up.’
‘Why does he think that?’
‘Christ knows. Well, except that he found an email from this guy I met in an Internet chat room a couple of months ago when I was researching sperm donors. It might have looked a bit dubious out of context. But I’ve never even set eyes on the guy. Plus, I think he’s gone off the whole idea of a baby. He’s just bought himself a Harley-Davidson and goes off to these rallies every other weekend. I’m all for a bit of independence, but does that sound like the behaviour of a prospective new father?’
‘Perhaps he’s making the most of what might turn out to be his last year of freedom?’ I offered, thinking, how bizarre to be sticking up for Jeremy. ‘Have you got any further with, you know, donors?’
‘I’ve got an appointment next week. Jeremy won’t come with me. He says he can’t get time off work. I think he’s secretly hoping that nothing will happen and things will just carry on the way they are until I hit the menopause. You don’t want to come, do you? Hold my hand?’
‘I might have to go to London,’ I said, resolving at that moment that I would indeed go to London if that was what it would take to avoid any involvement in Carol’s quest for insemination. ‘Couldn’t one of your girlfriends go?’
‘I suppose so. They all think I’m barking to be wanting a baby at my age. Most of them are looking forward to packing the kids off to university. Anyway, they’re all sick of me going on about it. I do go on, don’t I?’ she laughed. ‘You should tell me to shut up.’
‘Would it work?’ I enquired.
She threw a cushion at me. ‘What are we eating tonight? I fancy something hot and spicy.’
‘Well it so happens that Gerald has done a big shop this morning, so vegetable curry is not out of the question.’
‘There was a nice bottle of Meursault in the fridge at home,’ Carol said wistfully. ‘I wish I’d thought of bringing it, but I left in such a rush. I only had time to grab the essentials. I bet Jeremy’s drinking it now, the old soak.’
I took the hint and limped out to the k
itchen, returning with a bottle of £3.49 Chilean white – Gerald’s choice – and two glasses.
Gerald himself rejoined us, washed, dressed and groomed. He had even wiped his glasses. I was pleased to note that he had changed into a different shirt and trousers, and no longer trailed an unsavoury smell. He sat at the vacant end of the sofa, beside Carol’s fishnet-stockinged feet, and eyed her warily.
‘So how are you doing, Gerald?’ she said, pleasantly.
‘All right, thank you.’
‘Married? Divorced? Kids?’
‘No.’
‘Whereabouts are you living nowadays?’
‘Here.’ Gerald darted a quick look in my direction. ‘Just for the moment.’
I left Carol to pursue this rather unfruitful line of questioning and went to prepare the curry. I wondered if I should tidy up a bit before Alex arrived, but I had a feeling she wasn’t going to come. It was a filthy night to be out, and the track would be a mudslide. I wondered whether the ford would even be passable by now, although it had clearly given Carol’s Mercedes no problem earlier.
As I assembled the ingredients on the table I strained to overhear the conversation in the sitting room. It was ominously quiet: Gerald and Carol had never found much common ground and neither of them, for different reasons, was particularly good at the small civilities. I wasn’t entirely sure who I felt needed protecting from whom, and then decided that it wasn’t my responsibility anyway. They had both descended on me, uninvited and without warning; let them make the best of it.
Presently the silence was broken by the whump of pop music bursting from the CD player. Saturday Night Fever. Carol wandered in, rolling the stem of her wine glass between her fingers, and humming along to the Bee Gees. ‘I didn’t even know I had this album,’ I said, slicing the bark off a piece of ginger to release its strange, bitter scent.
‘You don’t,’ said Carol. ‘I got it out of my car.’ Idly she picked up a tin of garam masala. ‘This is four years out of date,’ she said, tossing it in the bin in disgust. ‘Your phone’s dead by the way.’
‘I know. The lines must be down. Who are you trying to ring?’
‘Oh, no one. Can’t seem to get a signal on my mobile either.’
‘There’s no coverage up here. Are you trying to call Jeremy?’
‘No. God, no. Let him stew.’ She began to dance, nonchalantly, around the kitchen table, glass in hand. She was quite a good dancer, as hedonists often are – a combination of supple joints and lack of inhibition, perhaps. In spite of her denials about Jeremy, I noticed she kept glancing out of the window into the dripping darkness as though half expecting him to come roaring up on his Harley-Davidson to claim her. While she was looking away I tipped some coriander and cumin seeds into a skillet and quickly put the jars back in the larder before she could check the expiry dates.
Gerald ambled in, driven out of the sitting room by the music. ‘Anything I can do to help?’ he asked. His round-shouldered, splay-footed stance proclaimed a lifetime spent on the perimeter of things.
Carol shimmied over to him. ‘Do you want to dance, Gerald?’ she purred.
‘No,’ he replied, backing off. ‘People our age look ridiculous trying to dance.’
Carol rode the insult, shaking her hips, undeflected.
I handed him a knife. ‘Here. You can cut up some veg instead.’ He sat at the table, obediently, awaiting precise instructions.
Carol was rummaging in her handbag. After some minutes she produced a small twist of foil. Oh my God, I thought, she’s not going to snort coke in front of Gerald?
She unwrapped a small white pill which she washed down with the last of her wine. ‘Folic acid,’ she explained, bridling at our suspicious expressions. ‘Got to take it before you even get pregnant or the baby ends up deformed.’ Her high spirits of a moment before vanished instantly, swept away by a cold wind of fear.
‘Here, crush these spices,’ I said, passing her the pestle and mortar, determined to halt this dangerous slide into introspection. She was onto her second bottle and tears couldn’t have been far away. She rolled the roasted spices off the skillet and began to pound them vengefully.
There must be something therapeutic about the process of communal cooking. Soon all three of us were labouring contentedly, slicing, grinding and stirring, while the rain beat on the windows and the doors rattled in their frames. Whoever was responsible for cutting up chillies was obviously more interested in the process than the outcome, as the curry was unanimously agreed to be too hot.
We ate off the kitchen table from my odd collection of boot-sale crockery. (I’d surrendered all the Wedgwood in the divorce and never felt the need to replace it.) Carol found my supply of household candles and stuck one in an egg cup. ‘Diamonds and candlelight,’ she said, fluttering her ringed fingers near the flame. ‘A girl’s best friend.’
The Bee Gees had been replaced by David Bowie. ‘This is like being a student again,’ she said, through numb lips. ‘Cheap plonk and sharing a kitchen.’
‘And vegetarian cooking,’ I added.
‘And loud music.’
‘And leaving the washing up until the next meal.’
‘I never went to university,’ said Gerald.
Because we were in our forties and sensible now, we did wash up, and dried everything, even the plates, and put it all away and wiped the surfaces. The leftover curry I piously covered and put in the fridge with no real intention of ever revisiting it.
In the sitting room, Gerald was on his knees by the grate, trying to revive the embers of a dying fire, while Carol was poking about in the cupboard in search of amusement. ‘You’ve got Monopoly!’ she said in an accusing tone. ‘When do you ever play that?’
‘Never,’ I said. ‘I hate Monopoly. I hate winning it and I hate losing it. Mum and Dad would never play it with us when we were kids and now I can see why.’
‘I think it’s a sign of maturity when you start hating Monopoly,’ Carol agreed.
‘I like Monopoly,’ said Gerald. He had rebuilt a pile of newspapers and wood on top of the embers, and was trying to draw the fire by holding a double-page spread of the Yorkshire Post over the chimney mouth. This achieved, he sat back in the armchair, cradling the TV remote hopefully and throwing occasional hostile glances at the CD player, which was still pumping out seventies pop.
Carol brought out a twenty-year-old edition of Trivial Pursuit, settled herself on her nest of cushions, and began reading questions aloud, frequently scanning ahead and supplying the answer in the same breath. ‘Who famously said of Ronald Reagan – oh, ha ha, that’s Gore Vidal.’
Gerald gave a hiss of annoyance. He generally liked quizzes, but Carol’s delivery was proving a serious impediment to his enjoyment.
‘This stuff seems so dated now,’ she said. ‘Baader–Meinhof and Arthur Scargill and perestroika. Like something from another century.’
‘It was another century,’ Gerald reminded her. ‘Does anyone mind if I watch the weather forecast?’
We shook our heads and Gerald switched the music off with visible relief. Through the shock of silence came the rumble of a car engine, and a dazzle of headlights was scattered in the raindrops on the blacked-out windows.
Carol leapt up. ‘That’ll be Jeremy,’ she said, more in excitement than alarm, it seemed to me.
‘He doesn’t know you’re here,’ I said, and then, suddenly suspicious, ‘He doesn’t know you’re here, does he?’
She slumped a little. ‘No. No, you’re right. Of course not.’
‘You could always go to him,’ I suggested, as I opened the front door. She shook her head, affronted. It was drama she wanted, not some lukewarm reconciliation.
Alex Canning stood in the conservatory, shaking beads of water from her fleecy hair. She was wearing a vast plastic poncho, beneath which only her small, booted feet were visible.
‘What a night!’ she laughed.
‘I didn’t think you’d come.’
‘
I nearly didn’t. I tried to ring, but I couldn’t get through, so I thought I’d better show up in case you’d waited in specially.’
‘I was in anyway,’ I said. ‘I’ve got company. Come in while I go and find the folder.’ I helped her to lift off her poncho and showed her into the sitting room to perform introductions.
Gerald acknowledged the visitor with a nod and turned back to the weather forecast. ‘Flooding up in Castleton,’ he said.
‘Hello,’ said Carol, flushing slightly as her eyes travelled downwards, taking in Alex’s pregnant silhouette. ‘Remind me how you two know each other.’
‘Chris is lending me some material for a piece of research I’m doing,’ said Alex, perching on the arm of the couch. She looked at the Trivial Pursuit board on the coffee table. ‘Are you in the middle of a game? I don’t want to interrupt.’
‘No, these killjoys won’t play,’ Carol replied – a piece of pure invention. ‘When’s your baby due?’
‘Three weeks,’ said Alex.
Gerald, annoyed by this interruption to the weather forecast, turned up the volume, and drew his chair even closer to the screen, on which was an image of fire crews sandbagging the River Esk.
‘Is it your first?’ Carol went on.
‘Yes.’
‘How exciting. Was it planned?’
‘Carol . . .’ I protested.
‘What?’
‘That’s a bit personal. You don’t have to answer,’ I added as an aside to Alex.
‘Don’t be silly. Women love talking about their pregnancies.’ She beamed at Alex, her expression misty with drunken goodwill. ‘Have you got any good names up your sleeve?’ She ploughed on without waiting for an answer. ‘I’ve got a thing about Clem at the moment – for a girl or a boy. You can have it if you like, since it doesn’t look like I’ll be needing it.’
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