She laid the notes on her lap. I found myself examining a single, ruler-straight line that had appeared between her eyebrows.
‘Do you think? I mean, don’t … I’m so grateful for these, and I’m really glad you came out to deliver them. They’re perfect. But … might I look a little silly, talking like that wine buff on the television?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. Spend some time with them and you’ll grow in confidence.’
‘You’re right, of course. I’m sure confidence is all it is. I wish I was an expert.’
Were. I wish I were an expert. I forgave her. ‘It doesn’t take much,’ I said.
An idea was starting to form. I remember wondering if I dared, which seems ridiculous to me now. Looking back on it, it was clear Christine was asking for my help. That means she trusts me. Obviously she was too polite to ask, because she’s that class of woman, but in her anxiety she failed to conceal that what she wanted was for me to run the tasting for her. Again, looking back on it, I should have suggested it at the outset, but she didn’t know me then, and I didn’t know her. When I finally – tentatively, I’m embarrassed to recall – suggested that very thing she almost jumped for joy, and I was rewarded with the widest, most beautiful smile I’d ever seen.
I’d only been there an hour before, but when I walked back into the hallway I was flabbergasted by its majesty. The open central space, dominated by the gilt carriage on a podium in its middle, was flanked by two sweeping stone staircases with wrought iron bannisters that curved up to a high and ornate balcony. There were chandeliers, shimmering with crystal droplets of light, suspended above, and two suits of armour by the walls guarding them. I stopped to take it in, properly this time, as it all seemed more glorious in Christine’s presence than in the butler’s, in front of whom I’d had no wish to seem even remotely impressed. As I stood there gawping, Christine took my arm in hers.
‘It’s funny,’ she said. ‘It’s only seeing you looking around that I’ve remembered how amazing it is here. We’ve got some beautiful things. But when you live with it for a while it starts to become just wallpaper. I should look at it more often.’
I got a feeling I didn’t recognise, since my honeymoon at least. It was a there-and-then realisation that the moment I was in was memorable, even romantic. Everything else seemed to fall away, and I was standing there, content, arm in arm with a beautiful woman. I could smell her perfume in my nostrils and feel her warmth through my clothes. Romance doesn’t usually visit me like that. The most romantic moments of my life have all been assigned that value in retrospect. It was from looking back on them, sharing a story and placing them in a context that the feeling of romance would grow. But in that hallway on Wednesday evening I felt calm and warm, as if I’d been dipped in melted chocolate, and I was fighting to contain a burgeoning erection.
We were there for a few seconds, and when I felt our silence was about to outstay its welcome I decided to ask Christine about the carriage. There wasn’t a plaque for me to read.
‘So–’ I said, but that was as far as I got, because back came Lennox. I withdrew my arm, feeling like a teenager caught by my girlfriend’s dad, and my eyes found the floor.
‘Excuse me, Ma’am. I wonder if I might have a moment of your time.’
‘Of course, Mister Lennox. Is there a problem?’
Lennox threw me a glance; I wasn’t to be privy to this. ‘It is a family matter, Ma’am.’
Christine’s face hardened, and her lips drew together. ‘Is it Emily?’
‘Ma’am–’
‘For goodness’ sakes, Lennox, is it Emily?’
He looked at me again, then back at his employer. ‘Yes, Ma’am. I’d rather not discuss it here.’
‘Where is she? Does she want money?’ Lennox gave the merest affirmative nod. ‘Jesus. First the car, now … Look, I’m sorry Simon, you’d better go. I’ll call you in the week to finalise the arrangements, and I’ll arrange for the wine and glasses to be picked up on Friday afternoon. I’m so grateful. But now I have to go and sort this out. I hope you understand.’
‘Not a problem. I’ll see myself out. But I’ll talk to you soon. Thanks.’ And then, as an afterthought, ‘Bye.’ I followed that up with a half-arsed wave and lurched towards the door.
Real smooth.
It had been an interesting evening, all told. And that stuff with her daughter intrigued me. It looks very much as if birthday girl Emily isn’t quite the little princess I’d imagined her to be.
Chapter six
Peter (my little brother) used to shake his head at Julia and me over the dinner table and laugh, his genial manner concealing to everyone but me the streak of unconscious cruelty, and superiority, in his words. ‘Why on earth did you marry him, Julia? Of all people?’
I used to laugh back of course, and give my wife a fond look and an affectionate squeeze, in line with the required convention – nobody’s allowed to take offence at such things, after all – and endure the ensuing barrage of sarcasm with good grace. It was fine, because it was a joke; everybody was enjoying themselves (at my expense), and to break the mood would be unforgivable. What really fuelled my resentment, though, was that I had no salvo to fire in return. Everyone loved Peter, and women would have fallen at his feet if he hadn’t been so infuriatingly faithful to his own wife.
‘Why did you marry him, Sarah?’ I could have said.
‘His looks, his intelligence, his money, his job, his body, his charm, his perfect hair, his generosity …’
Bastard.
There were three times more people at Peter’s wedding than at mine. More still at his funeral. I’ve gone the other way: I doubt if the guests at my funeral will be enough to fill a camper van.
I didn’t like Peter when I was growing up. I didn’t like his relationship with our father, and the way they shared so many interests. They were both mad on rugby, cricket and football. I didn’t mind those things, but when they invited me to matches I invented excuses and didn’t go. I still don’t know why, and the memory of it still weakens me. They never stopped asking, but their conviction ebbed away. When I emerged from my teenage cocoon and realised that I wanted a relationship with both of them, I began to ask to go with them. I read about the England rugby team and decided that this fly-half kicked too much and that centre was a genius. But it wasn’t enough, it wasn’t in my blood. I would try to join in their flowing punditry, in the pub or over dinner, and the flow would trickle to a halt. They might even exchange a glance, but they would make the effort, and offer generous agreements or sage nods of the head, and that was the worst part: my own family had to make the effort to include me.
Peter was surely the purest possible product of my parents’ combined genes. As sperm met egg and his identity was established, all the obvious flaws fell away. It was as if I were a trial run – a rehearsal for the real thing. Nature got it right second time round, and my parents had had some practice, so nurture also had a head start. He was deputy head boy of our school (surely one of the few to fully transcend a ridiculous surname during those sensitive years); he got a first at university and walked into a lucrative job with a business solutions company, handling multimillion-pound contracts from the government to supply refuelling craft for fighter planes. He made so much money. I watched him blossom, and come out of his own cocoon with colourful, expansive wings which took him all over the world and to the height of his ambition, while my dismal pinions barely flapped at all. It’s the worst kind of torment to hate someone you love. I can’t begin to describe the guilt, even before they go and die on you. And if I were a better man, a man more like him, I might have been able to save him.
So why did Julia marry me?
I have a few theories. Favourite for a long time was the notion that I got to her young. She was a bookish sort at school, skinny and ungainly, and late to develop the womanly curves, understated fashion sense and self-assurance that would keep her beautiful into her thirties. I didn’t have the luck with w
omen that should be everybody’s right as a teenager, and I started lowering my standards. When I did that, I stopped looking for the obvious choices and began to find beauty elsewhere. At fifteen, Julia had bad hair, she dressed like my mother and rarely wore makeup, but her face was delicate and structured, and endlessly fascinating. I lavished attention on her when nobody else would, and she gained some confidence. Fortunately I got to her before those sixth-form years when boys begin to shed the pressure to only bed Barbie dolls, and she was faithful to me when attention started coming her way, because I managed the irreplaceable feat of being her first love. I frustrated her at times, and I even left her for a few months at university when my first opportunity to bed a Barbie doll came my way. She forgave me for that, supposing that no man can really live with sleeping with just one woman for his whole life, but she told me it was my last chance: I’d had my fun; I knew what it was like, so no more. She never told me what she did during those months, and the jealousy of it (my fervent imagination conjuring up all kinds of rampant sexual adventure in the unwanted freedom I’d handed her) still claws at me every few months. I know she did something, because sex was different afterwards. I didn’t want to do it for a long time after I realised that, and pestered her to tell me the truth. Better to know, I think. But she knows what I’m like. I’d never let it go.
Maybe she married me because I’m her first love. Maybe because she’s loyal. But I was reminded this morning of another of her traits – one that might just be applicable: she’s disproportionately kind to helpless creatures.
We had a pleasant morning. I do like Sundays, when I’m not working first-thing. I woke up early, feeling vague and puzzled. It took me a few moments to get my bearings. My mouth was dry, which led me to suspect that I’d drunk too much the night before, but I couldn’t remember. The first thing I was completely aware of was the warmth of the body next to me: my wife. She was curled up facing away from me, wearing the tatty old t-shirt she likes to sleep in, and I wrapped my arms around her, cupping her breasts in my hands and enjoying the feel of them under the cloth. Julia murmured, arched her back and pressed her buttocks against my crotch. There was no going back from there.
Julia’s sexual appetite can take a while to get going, but when it does, it gathers momentum like a tumbling boulder that won’t be stopped until it has run its course. Her eyes reveal it. Rational and logical reasoning switch off, and the caudate nucleus – that ancient, reptilian centre of the brain – sparks into life a primitive passion. When that happens, we could be in a field, a shopping centre, a theatre, the car, and she hates to let it drop until she’s fulfilled. I’ve been embarrassed more than once as a consequence, and she’s been disappointed many more times than that (especially given my recent back trouble). But this morning it all went perfectly. Oral sex both ways, some creative verbal stuff (‘You’ve pinned me down, haven’t you? I can’t get away, can I? What if someone can see us? I want to cry for help: cover my mouth– That’s it: fuck me! I’ve been a bad girl!’), then simultaneous orgasm after a lengthy bout of copulation. And as usual Julia giggles about how carried away she gets with the (let’s face it, fairly innocuous) dirty stuff. This is the same middle-class guilt that saw her take two months to pluck up the courage to nip into Ann Summers and buy her dildo. (I suggested she get it on Amazon, but she said you can’t tell sizes from pictures, as if she were buying shoes.)
But she’s always been more adventurous than me, and even after all these years I need to be prompted. When I talk dirty to her I’m usually responding to the cues she gives me. In fact, she told me once it wouldn’t matter what I said; she just likes to hear me talk. She also fantasises about being caught – although if we were I think she’d die of shame – so she seizes any opportunity to have sex on our travels. I’ve never told her, but I’d much rather we kept it to the privacy of our own home. I do these off-the-wall things to keep the peace, but I have my limits: I don’t care how much she thinks I’ll like it, under no circumstances will I let her stick her finger, her dildo, or anything else for that matter, up my arse.
I knew I did a good job this morning when Julia offered to make me breakfast. This is unheard of; we normally do it together. We have fallen into assigned roles, in which I make the tea and get out the bowls, plates and cereal, she does the toast, milk, jam and juice. The only aspect left open to doubt is who retrieves the papers from the doormat. I was grateful for her offer but I got up to help anyway, cursing myself a little, because I couldn’t relax with that nagging scrag-end of my usual routine scratching at my brain. It’s the same feeling I get when I’m bored with cleaning my teeth but still have two minutes to go, or if I bump one elbow and don’t get to bump the other one to balance it up.
We were sitting in silence over our breakfast with the newspapers – she got them this time. I was reading the culture section, Julia the news, and I was nudging her slippered foot with my own under the table. Every now and then we would look at each other and smile, refreshed by the peculiar intimacy of having recently had our mouths wrapped around each other’s genitals, and still basking in post-coital endorphins. The contentment in the room was tangible, like a warm bath, but it didn’t last long. The spider saw to that.
I don’t like spiders. That’s my way of saying I’m scared of spiders, which I consider a reasonable fear. I mean, look at the bastards. Nothing should have knees higher than its torso, especially hairy ones. This spider was big, too, and it scuttled as if on some evil purpose right across the floor in front of me. My reactions were these: first, I jumped, as it appeared in the corner of my eye; then, as I registered it was indeed a spider, I drew both my feet up to my chair; then, I remember feeling outraged at this particular spider for not respecting the winter-long spider-free agreement; and then, as it got closer still, I stamped on the cunt.
‘Simon!’ Julia shouted. ‘What did you do that for?’
‘It’s a spider.’
‘So it was a spider. What gives you the right?’
I already knew I couldn’t win in this situation. Four or five responses passed through my mind, which I knew she would reject (I hate the bastards / it was coming for me / it was after the cheese in the fridge / I did it to annoy you) before I shrugged and made a noncommittal sound.
‘Spiders don’t do you any harm, Simon.’
‘I know.’
‘You can’t arbitrarily kill things because you’re scared of them.’
I bloody can. I just did. ‘Why not? It’s a spider. Nobody cares about spiders.’
‘I do. If it weren’t for them, we’d be overrun with flies.’
‘So it’s all right for spiders to kill flies, but not for me to kill spiders.’
‘You sound like a sulky teenager. Spiders are living things. They have as much right to carry on living as you or I. Who’s to say they’re not as important as us in the scheme of things?’
‘Oh, for God’s sake! What scheme of things?’
Julia shook her head. ‘You’re so convinced, aren’t you, that there’s nothing more to life than a few random molecules banging together? What if you’re wrong?’
‘I’m not wrong. Science is proven, God isn’t.’
‘It’s not proven. It’s as much a leap of faith as religion. Compelling evidence does not represent proof, and you know perfectly well that science believes in lots of things for which there appears to be no proof whatsoever. Dark matter? Dark energy? Who are they kidding? Everyone believes in that stuff because they haven’t found a way to disprove it: “It must be there, because our theories don’t add up if it isn’t.” Faith, that’s what that is.’
‘Are we still on the spider?’ I said, losing patience. This seemed like an awfully circuitous way of telling me what a shit I am.
‘Yes we are. What if there are things science can’t explain? What if all life really is sacred? Even without God, the spark of a living consciousness in an infinite universe is a truly rare and remarkable thing. But what if there is a God? You ca
n’t prove there isn’t, and you’ve just offended him.’
‘So I should believe in God to make sure I’m looked after when I die?’
‘You can’t argue against the fact that belief in most religions, on the sub-extremist stratum at any rate, provokes consideration and kindness to other living things. Without that, where does your moral code come from?’
I decided to ignore the fact that she was now operating on the super-bollocks stratum. ‘It’s internal. You treat others as you would wish to be treated.’
‘And you’ve just given me a near-verbatim quote from the Bible. And the Quran. But why? Why should we do that if there are no divine consequences?’
I shrugged again. Julia carried on. I wanted to force-feed her one of my slippers. However, she was losing commitment in the argument, and the hostility had gone out of her voice. ‘I read a theory recently that the universe is God. That in the quest to know Himself, God split Himself up into as many forms as he could, to try to regard Himself and understand what He was.’
‘The Big Bang?’
‘Why not? And we are the result of that division. Whether through God or not, each consciousness in the universe has the extraordinary ability to sense what’s around it. The universe has found a way to regard itself. Who’s to say that a spider’s perspective is less valuable than ours? I think that would be a supremely arrogant assumption.’
This interests me. Spiders are apparently as important in the universe as humans, and I just killed one. If I can kill a spider without the slightest twinge of conscience, it’s only a question of scale. What I’d done just then was snuff out a limited lifespan before its time. That’s all. It wasn’t a long lifespan, but, according to Julia’s theory, one potentially as important as my own. So I’ve done my spider a grave disservice, and I don’t feel a shred of pity for the little bastard. He shouldn’t be so ugly. And is it really that big a leap to kill a human? In the scheme of things, the cosmic view, humans are nothing – far less significant than spiders are to us. There are as many suns in the universe as there are grains of sand on Earth, countless planets and surely innumerable forms of life. It won’t matter a damn if one more human goes missing.
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