Except now it’s seven fifteen on a hazy Tuesday morning, and nothing seems to fit very well after all. I have slept quite well. I have slept unusually well, but have woken to the pounding of some hitherto undiscovered organ in my body. Not sexual. Not a heart string. Not anything I can recognise. Just a small leaping sensation as I contemplate the day. I wish I could switch it off, but I can’t. I’m lying here, in my fusty top bunk. Close to the rafters and all the small nameless scurrying things that have made their homes here and I am a little sodium bomb, itchy beneath the hairy plaid blanket. I am listening to Ruth chattering about vest tops and bra straps but already I am wondering if he’s back.
I grab for prosaics as I contemplate my feelings. Jonathan’s sandwiches. Kate’s tattoo. The prospect of saving-the-refuge with my mum. But they refuse to re-assure me. Refuse, because I’m changed. I’ve just seen my first shooting star.
Shooting stars are not stars at all, of course, but meteors. Tiny, tiny dust particles, that move at great speed, and which burn up on entry to the atmosphere. Amazing to think that something so tiny can produce such a spectacular effect.
‘God, Sal, look at the state of you! What d’ya do? Get in a punch up with a porcupine?’
This had been Ruth, last night, back at the centre. They must have phoned ahead to let them know we were on our way, because by the time the Land Rover crunched noisily into the forecourt, there was already a small gathering of people outside, in various states of abandonment and dishevelment, all clapping and cheering us home. An ambulance was parked just off to the side, to transport Nick, as they’d told us, to the nearest hospital, in order to X-ray his chest and foot.
He was dispatched without delay, and I was led gratefully off for a shower. Despite the sudden intensity of our parting – no, no, because of it, maybe – I felt a bit high. A bit happy, in fact. A bit like I’d just been shot through with adrenaline. Or an arrow perhaps? A little gold one?
Ruth slopped wine into a plastic beaker and passed it to me through the shower curtain. The bathrooms were primitive. A row of six showers, a couple of toilets, some lockers, a battered slatted wood bench.
I looked. Ruth was right. The scratchy hands were just the tip of the iceberg. My shins were both similarly decoratively etched, and there was a crusty three inch cut along the outside of my thigh. The hot water was beginning to make them all hurt.
‘You’re right,’ I said, making an inspection. ‘And bites as well. Blimey, Ruth, I’m covered in them. Look at this – ’ I stuck out an ankle for inspection. A collection of hard red lumps formed an impromptu bracelet. There were similar bumps on my neck. I stood and let the water stream over my body for a while, and the warm wine infuse inside.
I could hear Ruth sloshing more wine in her mug.
‘Hmm. I’m almost glad I bunked off now,’ she said. ‘That guy from Horsham won, of course, and there’s been one hell of a ding-dong between those two hags from Worthing. Almost came to blows, apparently. Russ seemed pretty chirpy. But what a balls up, eh?’
‘Let’s just say I shan’t be in any great rush to do that particular exercise again.’ Which was such a wild and crazy load of rubbish. Right then I rather thought I’d like to go and live in the woods. Spear salmon for breakfast. Chop trees. Make fires.
‘I shan’t be in a great rush to do any of this again, quite frankly,’ she said. ‘You know I’m being pursued by that Pharmacist from Redhill now, don’t you? And I have a horrible feeling I gave him my phone number last night. He‘s been offering me mint imperials all day.’
I stuck my head out.
‘And your email address, if I remember rightly.’
‘Oh, God. This is all too much! What a klutz I am! And God! There’s me, stuck here and fending off the slithery advances of contemptible old men with ear hair and liver spots , and there’s you – out there –’ She gestured. ‘All on your lonesome with the Anglo-American treaty. You! Who couldn’t care less! Not fair. Not fair. What a missed opportunity! If only I’d known he was coming this morning! Shit, Sal, I wish he’d get a move on and ask me out.’
I retreated behind the curtain again to contemplate the alarming rush of blood this statement sent whooshing to my head.
‘But he’s married, Ruth,’ I said.
‘Separated,’ I heard her say. ‘So don’t give me any of that moral indignation crap.’
‘With a child,’ I added.
‘Hardly. He’s at college. And so what?’
I turned off the water and pulled the curtain back again. I wondered how she knew all this. ‘So everything!’
‘So nothing! He’s three thousand miles away, for God’s sake!’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
‘What did you mean, then?’
I stepped out of the shower and wrapped my towel around me. Ruth was pouring herself some more wine. I felt wilted, all of a sudden. ‘I just meant…well, do you need those sort of complications in your life? Really? I mean, yes, he’s attractive and all that, but you’re young, and you’re single. Do you really want to get involved with someone who’s probably in his forties and who is everything but?’
She blinked at me. I was glad to be pink from the shower.
‘Hey, I’m not talking a joint pension plan here, Sal. Only shagging. Only fun.’
I wished she wouldn’t say things like that. It always put me in mind of copulating yaks. She was worth more than that. So, I thought, was he. ‘Besides,’ she went on. ‘He’s only here for a while anyway. What is it – a few months?’
Away from his difficult domestic stuff. ‘I’m not sure,’ I said.
‘So we’re not talking a long term heavy relationship-type scenario. I just fancy him like buggery, that’s all. Where’s the harm in that?’
I began gingerly rubbing myself dry through the towel. There were so many ways in which Ruth’s cranky life-plan were causing her harm that I would have been at a loss to know how to respond to that one even if I hadn’t just had fairly unequivocal (and now physiological – I was burning) evidence that Nick Brown wasn’t interested in her. For all her thrusting post-feminist pursuit of here-and-now gratification, and her ballsy vocabulary of shagging and drinking, she was lonely and insecure and not terribly happy. She had no family to speak of – no brothers or sisters. Just her Dad, who I knew wasn’t terribly well. But she spoke of him little, and I didn’t like to press her.
‘No harm,’ I agreed carefully. ‘But not much good either. I guess I just don’t understand why you’d want to start another relationship that’s going nowhere, that’s all. I mean, I know you say you’re not thinking long term, but aren’t you going to at some point in your life?’
She stood up and snorted.
‘Hang on, Sal!’ she said, waggling a finger at me. ‘Who says it wouldn’t turn out to be long term? Eh?’
‘But you just said –’
‘Well of course I just said. I’m not stupid, you know. I do know how things work. But who’s to say?’ She spread her hands and the wine slapped against the side of her mug. ‘Who’s to say he won’t fall madly in love with me and want to whisk me back to New York or wherever –’
‘San Diego.’ It had a dreamy ring about it.
‘San Diego, then. It could happen. And – well, for Christ’s sake, Sal, allow a girl her little daydreams, won’t you?’ She grinned at me, but there was something defiant in her eyes. ‘I mean,’ she said. ‘Come on, who knows? Why not?’
I had no answer to that so I shrugged instead. Which she must have taken as disapproval, because she then said,
‘Hey! What’s with the face?’
‘What face?’
‘That face. You look like you’re sucking on a lemon. Ha! Goodness, Sally Matthews, if I didn’t know you were a happily married woman, I’d think you were after him yourself!’
Chapter 10
Nick didn’t return. There had been a break, as it turned out. Not his ankle – he’d crac
ked one of his ribs. Nothing they could do for a cracked rib, apparently, but they’d kept him in hospital for what was left of the night, and then was driven back to his flat in Oxted by the Area Manager, who had to get back early for some meeting. The rest of us stayed at the centre for a de-briefing, then headed off for home, in my case, at some speed, as I had elected to travel with Ruth.
It was a little after one in the afternoon when she dropped me, and as I didn’t have to go into work I decided I’d ignore the heaps of washing and shopping (and housework and drudge and arrangements and answerphone messages and hassle, frankly) and instead take myself and Merlin off on an afternoon jaunt down to my Mother’s. Catch up with her news. Have a nice walk, perhaps. I wasn’t done with outdoors. I wasn’t done with this feeling. I didn’t want to be Mrs Matthews again just yet.
But I am Mrs Matthews. As Ruth has already pointed out. I am Mrs Matthews, happily married woman. Well, I am, aren’t I? To all intents and purposes, in every way visible, as far as anyone can see, is concerned, gives a fig about, I am not an unhappily married woman, therefore I must be a happily married woman. Mustn’t I?
I was a happy bride, certainly. I keep hanging on to that. I was a happy new mother, a happy young wife. Yet the years have rolled by and I don’t think I have ever really paused to consider things properly. To step back and take stock. Was I really happy then? Am I really happy now? I look at Jonathan sometimes and I struggle to bring it back. The intensity of feeling that I had for him once. To re-engage with it, recall all its nuances and distractions. How enigmatic and protecting and powerful he’d seemed. And yet how vulnerable. Was that part of it? His stoical suffering? Which even now jolts me with sudden compassion. But I wonder if perhaps I should be feeling something different. Something more equal. Something less complicated. I think of him now and I feel no stirring of desire. But up to now I haven’t worried. This is normal, is it not? Married people can’t possibly keep all that stuff up for so long. I have no money worries, no health worries…and yet….
…and yet if that is so, then why am I feeling so strange right now? Why am I suddenly examining my happiness, as if it’s something I can tot up as points on an index, hoping I’ll reach the reassurance of achieving an acceptable score?
My mother, I think, is happy. When my father died ten years ago, my mum, holding on to the retirement dream they’d both cherished, sold their semi in Crawley and bought the little ground floor flat she’s in now. It’s only a short walk to the seafront from here, which is nice because my mum loves to walk. Loves to go to the shops, too, and it’s near those as well. Thus she has everything she might want. Mind you, given the situation next door, perhaps a few things she might not want as well. But pulling up outside I see a poster in her window. ‘Save number twenty-seven!’ it proclaims, in felt tip. Yes, I decide, as I let Merlin out of the car. Overall, I think she’s pretty happy.
If not right at this moment. Goodness me, but my Mum’s got a bee in her bonnet this afternoon.
‘Useless, useless, useless!’ she announces as she ushers me into her flat. She marches across the living room and switches off the television.
‘Who’s useless?’ I ask her as I flop down on her sofa. I have aches and pains in all sorts of unlikely places. Unlikely flutterings in others.
‘Everyone!’ she exclaims, hands on hips in the middle of the little room. ‘I thought there would be a huge response once we’d got the piece in the paper – did I show you, by the way?’
‘No, you didn’t.’
She crosses the room and shunts her tapestry stand out of the way. She’s been doing this tapestry for more than a decade. She bought it when Dad was ill and she’d sit up at night with him. All these years on, and it’s still only half done. She pulls a file from a pile of papers on the side table behind it. Everyone seems to have a file on the go right now. Perhaps I should start one. Top Secret. The Nick Brown Affair. The thought brings a smile to my lips. Then the smile brings a lurch to my stomach. Mum hands me the paper. ‘But nothing!’ she says. ‘Not a dicky bird! And as for all that twaddle that journalist gave me about mounting his media campaign or whatever he called it – nothing! He’s not even returning my phone calls now. Probably thinks I’m just some meddlesome old nuisance. Why doesn’t anybody care?’ She stabs a finger in the general direction. ‘It’s on page eleven. Cup of tea?’
‘Yes, please,’ I say, flicking through the pages.
‘And a biccie for you, Merlie?’ She ruffles his head, and he trots off to the kitchen behind her.
The photo is rather good, in fact. My Mother, left of centre, holding a hastily scribbled placard, and a woman in big boots who I recognise as Polly, standing beside her and holding an oversized cheque for £100. There’s a gaggle of my mum’s neighbours clustered around the entrance, and to the edge a small girl with impossibly big eyes, holding a Barbie doll by the leg.
‘Who’s the cheque from?’ I call out.
‘Oh, one of the shoe shops in the Arndale Centre, bless them. One of the mums, Kayleigh, is working there part time. But it’s a drop in the ocean. If Polly’s any hope of raising a deposit to buy the place, we’re going to need to raise thousands.’ She comes back in, wiping her hands on a tea towel. ‘Did you read the piece?’
‘Buy the place? Is that what she’s hoping to do?’ Mum nods. ‘Seems rather ambitious to me. I mean these houses must be worth a couple of hundred thousand at least. Quarter of a million even.’
‘I think she’s hoping for a lottery grant. She’s applied. You never know.’ She sits down on the sofa beside me. ‘Oh, I know it’s probably all pie in the sky, but if we could just get people interested – find a few benefactors – these poor women, Sally. It really makes you count your blessings that you married a decent man. And those poor little kiddies, what they’ve been through – it makes your blood run cold.’ She pokes a finger at the picture. ‘That’s little Megan, that one. Tracey’s daughter. She’s such a sweetheart. Anyway. We’ve decided it’s no good relying on the press, so we’re going to start up a petition. Get thousands and thousands of signatures.’
I picture my mum harrying shoppers outside Debenhams. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time.
‘That’s a good idea, mum,’ I say. ‘That the sort of thing will get you lots of publicity. And it’ll carry some weight with your MP as well.’
She shakes her head and grins at me, before getting up again and heading back to the kitchen. I follow her in. The kettle has boiled now, wreathing the tiny room with steam. The windowsill, as ever, is crammed with flowerpots on saucers, all playing host to African Violet cuttings in various stages of carefully nurtured growth.
She pours milk into mugs. ‘Oh, I’m not going to bother with him,’ she says. ‘I’m going straight to the top. I’m going to deliver it to Tony Blair.’
I grin back. ‘Just like that?’
‘Just like that,’ she says firmly. ‘In person. Right. Cup of tea, and then we’ll go for that walk. And you can tell me all about your trip.’
When I got home, Jonathan’s car was already in the drive, and he was Hoovering it. Jonathan Hoovering was always a bad sign. Jonathan could not Hoover and be happy. Jonathan Hoovered in the same way as other people took their frustrations out on squash balls or punch bags or post office queues. Were he happy he’d be sitting in the garden with the sports pages. I had spoken to him only briefly since returning from Wales, and that had been on the phone before I left for my Mother’s. And as much of our short interaction was shot through with my sudden, alarming, and very distracting conviction that my voice sounded so strange he would surely notice, I had still not addressed the fundamental I was staring at now. That here was my husband. The man I was married to (wielding a Dustbug and growling aggressively at some minor tar-based transgression on his footwell carpet) – the man I had been married to for almost eighteen years and all I could think of was how absolutely catastrophic it was that I should be feeling this way, at this
time, in this life.
Merlin, who had been dozing in the back of the car for much of the journey, now gathered his long limbs into order and loped across the drive to greet him. Jonathan looked up. I rallied.
‘Hello!’ I said cheerfully. ‘How are you?’
‘Ah,’ he said, plopping the mat on the ground and running the back of his hand over his brow. ‘Ah. You’re back then. How’s your mother?’
Why not ‘how are you?’ Why not? I pulled on Merlin’s cashmere ears.
‘Agitated,’ I told him. ‘About the refuge. She’s decided the best course of action right now is to go and pay a visit to Tony Blair.’
He rolled his eyes. ‘What?’
I shrugged as I pulled my bag from the car.
‘You know mum,’ I said. ‘Never one to do things by halves.’
‘Regrettably, I do,’ he said, with some asperity. ‘Does she really think she’s going to be able to just stroll up Downing Street and collar him?’ He shook his head and went back to bashing one of his mats.
‘Yes,’ I said, irritated by his attitude all of a sudden. ‘Yes. She does. And I’m quite sure she will. And at least she’s doing something useful.’
‘Whatever,’ he said, returning his attention to his Dustbug. ‘Nothing would surprise me where your mother is concerned. Any chance of some tea, by the way?’
Chapter 11
‘My God my God my God my GOD!’
‘Ruth, you are not a religious person. Why are you chanting at deities?’
It was the following Tuesday lunchtime. It had been a busy morning. Since Drug U Like’s time and motion attack on the appointments book, we’d become more frenetic than ever. Which was frenetic in any case at this time of year because everyone wanted prescription sunglasses. A fact that Drug U Like were anxious to exploit, by giving hundreds of pairs away free. I knew my precious twenty minutes in the staff canteen would mean an even more frenetic afternoon. Ruth clunked her tray up against mine and reached for a glass.
Straight on Till Morning Page 10