Straight on Till Morning

by Lynne Barrett-Lee

  ‘Even so, I wish you had told me. We should have been having this talk weeks ago.’

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘We’re here now, aren’t we?’

  The waiter came back with the wine and then another bustled up for our order.

  ‘It’s all horrendously expensive, Morgan. I can’t possibly let you pay for all this.’

  ‘Tough,’ she said. ‘Anyway, we’re celebrating, aren’t we?’

  ‘Celebrating? Well, I suppose, in a strange sort of way –’

  ‘Not me! You. Your new job, of course.’

  It seemed like a million years ago. I said so.

  ‘And you never even told me! Trust me to have to find out from Ruth.’

  ‘I had a lot of more important things on my mind at the time. Ruth? How come Ruth told you?’

  ‘When I spoke to her.’

  ‘Oh –’

  She raised her glass. ‘So here’s to you. Great news!’ She took a sip. ‘But one question.’

  I raised my brows, slightly tipsy. Vaguely smiling. Certainly unprepared for what was coming.

  Which was ‘What’s going on with this Nick Brown guy, Mum?’

  Chapter 27

  Oh, God. Here we were again. My stomach did a triple salko and landed with a splat somewhere near my shoes. ‘I beg your pardon,’ I said, forming the words out of sandpaper. ‘Nick Brown? The guy from work? What about him?’

  Here again. Just when I’d thought I could wriggle off the hook. Just when I thought I could swap deceit for depression, guilt for wretchedness and passion for regret. Just when, in short, I could start addressing the next bit; the getting on with things bit, here we were again. I felt I’d been skewered to my seat.

  ‘Yes, of course Nick Brown from work,’ she said, sliding her glass across the table a little so the waiter could top it up. Our starters arrived. I looked down at mine. It looked back benignly. My arm was laid lightly across the table, holding the stem of my own glass. I could feel my pulse hammering in my wrist. This could be nothing, of course. Some other supposition. About my job, perhaps. Something like that. Or perhaps she’d read something in the papers about Drug u Like. Or perhaps….. perhaps, perhaps, perhaps. There was no perhaps about it. I knew exactly what she meant. I heard a delicate, cut-glass laugh issue forth. It was mine. I added an enquiring smile to it. A theatrical lilt to my voice. And then I said, ‘And?’ loaded with meringue. ‘What about “Nick Brown from work”?’

  Morgan looked momentarily uncomfortable. As if considering the possibility that she’d jumped to some slightly embarrassing conclusions and would now have to recant in the face of an irate mother. Or perhaps not.

  ‘Well,’ she said. ‘I just rather got the impression that –’

  ‘Oh, really?’ I said cheerfully. ‘That sounds intriguing. What impression was that?’

  Her face changed again. Damn. My fault. My fault. I had jumped in too soon. Why did I do that? Why didn’t I just let her carry on feeling silly? I could feel my own expression configuring itself into the beginnings of its inevitable betrayal.

  She jabbed her fork into a scallop.

  ‘The impression,’ she said, in a much firmer voice, ‘that something is going on between you. That’s what.’ She popped the scallop into her mouth and chewed on it as she scrutinised me.

  I picked up my own fork. What to say next? What? Think. What? Think. I thought. But not for long enough. Morgan swallowed her fishy little sea creature. I ate a piece of lettuce.

  ‘Why?’ I said.

  She looked at me more earnestly now. ‘Lots of things,’ she said, leaning slightly forward and lowering her voice. ‘You telling me you were at Ruth’s when you weren’t, for one thing. The way you’ve been out so much just lately. The way you’ve been, period. The way –’

  ‘I have been busy and I have been stressed, Morgan. It’s hardly surprising that – ‘

  ‘The way I saw you and him in my kitchen.’ My fork stopped halfway to my mouth. So did Morgan’s. ‘Mum, he had his arms around you.’

  That one small moment of tenderness. That one chaste embrace. Was this the bad karma I’d been waiting for, maybe? I put the fork back on my plate and drank some more wine. I must get some water.

  ‘Morgan,’ I said stiffly. ‘There is nothing going on with me and Nick Brown.’ This much was true. No it wasn’t. Yes, it was. I picked the fork up again and pushed something else into my mouth. Some sort of mushroom. It tasted of carpet. Morgan’s hand stayed where it was.

  ‘Don’t lie to me, mum. I’ve had enough of being lied to. I’m right, aren’t I?’ This new forthright Morgan was frightening me. I continued to eat, shaking my head as I did so. Another piece of carpet. A leaf. A liliputian potato. This was my daughter. This was Jonathan’s daughter. This was not someone I could even begin to contemplate discussing my infidelity with. Perhaps if I continued to stuff enough food in my mouth I could ride it out till I thought up a credible response. I did so.

  ‘There’s no point,’ she went on, her voice becoming more brittle. ‘I’m not stupid, Mum. Anyone could see. It was so obvious. I tried to shrug it off at the time. I decided he was probably just comforting you or something. I decided maybe you were just upset and he was – ‘

  I swallowed my mouthful of undergrowth. ‘I was upset! Wouldn’t you be upset? He was comforting me. That was all he was doing, Morgan. He’s a friend. A good friend. And that’s all there was – all there is to it. I’m not – ‘

  But she carried straight on as if I hadn’t spoken at all. ‘But then the more I thought about it, the more it all began to make sense. Please tell me the truth, Mum.’

  I put my cutlery together. One last try. Damage limitation, at least. Then perhaps we could get this subject wrapped up and finished. Oh, the irony of being confronted with this now. When there was no longer anything to tell.

  ‘Morgan, I am. He’s just a friend. That’s all. Yes, I like him very much, and yes, all right, I enjoy his company, and yes, I have seen him socially a couple of times. But as a friend. Like Ruth.’

  She blew a small polite raspberry. Like a Parisian lady. Pish! ‘I don’t think so,’ she said.’ Mum, he was kissing your hair!’

  ‘Morgan, you’ve got this all wrong –’

  ‘You’re saying you haven’t, then?’

  ‘Haven’t what?’

  ‘Kissed him.’

  ‘Morgan, what is this? Of course I haven’t!‘

  She sat back in her seat and considered me for a moment. Then leaned forward again. Her pupils, I noticed, were dilated. Was this why she’d decided to get sozzled today? The better to confront me? ‘Mum, you are a hopeless liar,’ she said. ‘It would be comical if it wasn’t so…so awful.’

  Unless you are trained in the art of resistance under torture or tanked up with psychedelic drugs, there are only so many times you can gabble insincere denials at a person without the law of diminishing returns kicking in. I had, I could see with absolute clarity, just reached the limit of mine.

  ‘All right,’ I said finally, conscious that I had already taken too much wine on board on an empty stomach and that it was surely about to be my downfall. But I couldn’t think of anything else to say or do. ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have kissed him. No, I am not seeing him any more. It happened. It ended. That’s all there is to tell. Subject closed.’

  ‘You don’t look like you mean that.’

  Ah. Subject not closed, then. I held her gaze. ‘It’s the truth, nevertheless.’

  ‘Did he end it?’

  ‘No. I did.’

  ‘Because it was just a bit of fun? Because you went off him? What?’

  Either of those two would have done. Either of those to would have put paid to her scary conjecturing, but, liar and deceitful person that I undoubtedly was, I couldn’t seem to articulate them. I swallowed. ‘Because it was the only thing to do.’

  She looked satisfied.

  ‘So it’s not ended at all, the
n.’

  ‘Morgan, it has.’

  ‘Not here.’ She touched her chest. It wasn’t a question. Where did this daughter of mine develop such sharp intuition? Not from her father, that was for sure. I shook my head sadly.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you love him?’

  ‘Oh, for goodness sake, Morgan –’

  ‘I thought so.’ She was beginning to look belligerent now.

  ‘Morgan, I really don’t want to talk to you about this. Can we get some water?’

  She lifted an arm to call a waiter in that languid way that beautiful young women can do with impunity, as everyone is already watching them anyway.

  Then she dropped it and folded her hands together on the table cloth. She was still wearing her engagement ring, I noticed. ‘It’s as bad as I thought then,’ she said gravely.

  ‘What on earth do you mean, “as bad as you thought”? What exactly have you been thinking? Since when have you been analysing my every movement and –’

  ‘Mum, I’m not stupid,’ she said again. ‘I know exactly how things are with you and Dad.’

  Worse on worse. ‘Oh, really?’

  The waiter fetched up. Morgan pointed her fork at me. ‘Still or sparkling?’

  ‘Still.’

  ‘One of each, then, please. Yes, really.’

  I drank another gulp of wine to stop my mouth from desiccating while I waited for the water. Perhaps I could say I was going to the loo and go and get on a number twelve bus.

  ‘Morgan,’ I said, quietly, sadness pressing in around me. ‘I really don’t think it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Of course it’s my business!’ she said indignantly. ‘You’re my parents!’

  ‘I know that. It’s just – look, you really don’t know anything about it. Marriages are – well, they’re complicated. It’s easy to form an impression about someone else’s relationship, easier still to leap to conclusions, but you don’t really know, I can assure you. Never. Your father and I are just fine, OK? I won’t deny that we’re not the last of the red hot lovers, but we’ve been married a long time and, well, that’s par for the course for a lot of people. More than you probably imagine. It doesn’t mean the institution of marriage is about to be dragged to its knees’. I tried to look wise and world-weary, the latter, unsurprisingly, being effortless. ‘Morgan, please don’t concern yourself with this, OK? Concentrate your energies on your own relationship.’

  She gave me a sideways glance. ‘Yeah, right.’ She sounded like Kate.

  ‘But if you’ll take one piece of advice from me, I’d want it to be that you must make absolutely sure you’re certain before you marry Cody. Be sure. You’ll be a long time married. Think long and hard about what you want and –’

  ‘Did you do that? Did you think long and hard when dad proposed to you, then?

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes.’ I looked hard into the eyes of the little girl who had figured so prominently in my thinking back then. Whatever regrets I was living with, this young woman was not one of them. ‘Look, Morgan,’ I said. ‘I really don’t want to talk about this.’

  Tough. Because she did. Particularly in the small matter of my woolly thinking. I was beginning to speak in Kashmiri goat. Just what was I trying to say, for God’s sake? ‘But you’re not happy together, are you?’ she said, palms up, eyebrows raised. ‘Look. On the one hand you’re telling me to think hard before making any decisions about marrying Cody – fine. But on the other hand, you’re telling me I’ll probably be unhappy after a few years in any case. You’re talking nonsense, mum!’

  Which was true. ‘Look, Morgan,’ I tried, ‘it’s not as simple as that. You have to accept, sometimes, that, well it’s not always going to be the way you thought it would, maybe. That there will be times when you wonder –’

  ‘And how come you never said all this six months ago, eh? You’re just proving my point, Mum. It is serious, isn’t it?’ She looked at me earnestly. ‘Do you think you’ll leave dad?’

  ‘Leave him? Who said anything about leaving him, for goodness sake? Morgan, you’re being ridiculous. I don’t know what’s brought you to that conclusion, but you can just unconclude it right away, OK? I told you. There’s nothing going on. Your father and I –’

  ‘But you would, wouldn’t you? If it came to it. I mean, not necessarily for this guy, but – ’

  ‘What do you mean ‘if it came to it’? You talk as though I’m already setting a date! Morgan, just because I’m – because I’m, well, up in the air a bit right now, does not mean –’

  ‘I knew it,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was bound to happen sometime.’ She pulled her napkin from her lap and stood up suddenly. ‘I have to go and have a pee.’

  She went then, off to the ladies, her slim legs, glossy in tights that were not quite black but almost, drawing admiring glances from all the tables nearby. I sat and stared unseeing at my half finished food, wishing myself a million miles away. The waiter came back with the water and cleared our plates away. What had I ordered for my main course? Ugh. The thought of eating any more made me feel like throwing up. But that was nothing compared to how I was going to be feeling shortly. Oh, no.

  When Morgan returned, freshly lipsticked, but with a flush on her cheeks and a grim set to her mouth, she downed the last of her wine and refused more. Which seemed sensible. She was no longer quite sober.

  ‘The thing is,’ she said, apropos of nothing except perhaps whatever dialogue she had been conducting with herself while sitting on the loo, ‘–the thing is –’She shifted in her seat. ‘Look, you’re quite right. It is none of my business, but the thing is,’ she said again, ‘I know.’

  ‘You know what?’

  She looked down at the tablecloth.

  ‘About you and dad. About what happened.’ Happened? What did she mean by “happened”? But she rattled straight on without pausing to explain. ‘And I know how awful it must have been,’ she was saying, ‘but it meant nothing. Really it didn’t. I mean I know it went on a long time, and I know how that must have made you feel, but it didn’t mean he didn’t love you, you know. It didn’t. It was just a fling, Mum. Just something and nothing. Just one of those infatuations – yes. Infatuation. That was the word he used. Just one of those things that happen. And I always thought – well, I’ve been waiting, I suppose. I always thought how I would feel in that situation and whether I’d be able to do what you did. Just forgive. Trust. Get the marriage back on track. Love him still. Stay with him. All those things you’ve just been telling me people do. That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? But I never believed it. I never thought you’d stay with him. I always thought the day would come when – well. I mean, you’re so much younger than him, and pretty and clever and – God! I can’t imagine how I would be in that situation.’

  I think the Pinot Grigio must have dulled my responses, because at this point I should surely have been shrieking or jabbering or tossing back the rest of the bottle, but instead, all I seemed to be doing was staring at her. Fling. Fling. The word had eased itself head and shoulders above the others. I felt suddenly clammy. As if my brain had at long last caught up with my ears. ‘Morgan, what situation?’

  She leaned back a little while the waiter placed our plates in front of us. That was it. Goat’s cheese and asparagus tartlet. Why had I ordered that? It looked like a leak from the bottom of a bin bag. He moved off again. My head was beginning to swim now. Morgan picked up her cutlery. ‘Mum, you don’t have to pretend. I know about Constance, OK? Daddy told me. I mean, he didn’t actually need to, of course, but –’

  ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’ve known about it all along, Mum. Well, not all along, obviously, but since I’ve –’She stopped. Moved her wine glass half an inch across the tablecloth. Then yelped, ‘Oh, God!’ and slapped her hand to her face. She looked stricken. Horrified. A second crawled by. ‘Mum, you don’t – oh, God!’

  I p
rodded the sludge on my plate with my knife. ‘You’re right. I didn’t know,’ I said.

  And now she would have to tell me.

  It was a remarkably short and unprepossessing tale. Constance Perkins was an actress of some celebrity, apparently. That I couldn’t bring her to mind was most probably because I didn’t subscribe to TV Quick. She was currently (apparently) playing the proprietress of a hairdressing salon, in a crummy soap set in some swish London Mews (think El Dorado with drizzle), and of which, for reasons that have always eluded me, my mother was particularly fond. Back then, however, for this was four years ago, she was starring in some worthy west end production of the sort of play that gets lots of glittering reviews but no one, bar striving young thespian hopefuls, actually goes to see. This had been about the time when Jonathan had gone into practice with his colleague in London.

  So, in short, he’d fixed her teeth, and she, bless her, had paid him in kind.

  It had gone on for two and a half years. (The affair. Not the play. That bombed a now pleasing two months in.) A simple arrangement . He would see her on Monday nights – sometimes on Sundays too – when working in London at his practice. That was all. She was merely his mistress. Until being merely was no longer deemed sufficient, and she’d left him to marry her third husband (apparently), the cheesy presenter of some second rate quiz show. And I had known nothing about it. At all.

  Morgan was breathless after the telling. Skewered to her seat, in fact.

  ‘I thought you knew,’ she finished wretchedly. ‘I really thought you knew.’

  It could have been the third glass of wine I’d sunk, but by now I felt strangely detached. ‘So how did you find out?’ I asked.

  ‘I saw them.’ I nodded. She was an observant girl. ‘I called round to his flat after work one evening and I saw them getting into his car. Nothing specific, but it was just a bit too touchy feely, you know?’ She hesitated. Blushed. ‘Anyway,’ she went on in brisker tones, ‘I phoned him at the surgery the next day and asked him who she was.’ She smiled slightly. ‘He’s an even more useless liar than you. He gabbled a bit. Gave me a load of nonsense about her having a crown fitted or suchlike – none of which I believed, but there was nothing else to do but accept it. But being a suspicious soul, I kept an eye on him a bit – I was working in Cavendish Square then, remember? –’I nodded. I did remember. I remembered how nice I’d thought it was that Jonathan – poor lonely lamb up in London – would have Morgan working nearby. They could meet up for lunch. They could have dinner together. How nice, I’d thought. Save him being on his own. What a bastard. ‘Anyway,’ Morgan finished. ‘a couple of weeks later I saw them together again. He admitted it then.