by Louisa Young
‘Get a professional next time, then,’ I said. Dammit. I’d thought it was over.
He sighed.
‘And any news?’ he said.
‘He’s leaving the country tomorrow night.’
‘Is he? Is he?’
‘And coming back in a few days.’
‘Where’s he going?’
‘No idea.’
‘Find out,’ he said.
I said nothing.
He said nothing.
We were getting quite good at it by the time he made a big show of creaking to his feet.
‘I’ll have to think about this,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’
I’ll be out, I thought. I should have been out all along. I should not have got in. From here, a drink-drive conviction starts to look like a little thing, a thing no judge would hold against an otherwise decent woman. But now it’s too late.
Ben left. Good riddance, I thought. If only it had been.
*
I met Harry in the Winfield because I didn’t want anybody else in my flat polluting it. The Winfield is a club. There are no windows, just the heavy door with a little video camera so Liam knows whether or not to buzz you in. People go there to play snooker. I used to go there to drink late, in the days when I drank late.
Now I go there because Liam says, ‘Hello there, Angeline’ when I go in, and if you’re working at home alone a lot that’s nice. I go in the morning when it’s empty and smells of old fags and cleaning fluid, and sit at the bar on a high stool to drink coffee and read the paper and exchange pleasantries. Liam will cash me a cheque if I need it. Sometimes I eat a toasted sandwich. Sometimes I peer through the darkened glass which makes up the far wall of the small bar-room into the great chamber beyond, where each huge table has its own low pool of light, and the green baize gleams, and the figures move in the dark shadows round the edge of the pool, puppeteers offstage to their long performing cues. It’s a beautiful room. Nicotine plaster-work, heavy curtains, dark walls, dim corners. There are little telephones by each table and you can ring Liam behind the bar and ask for another vodka and tonic please. It used to be a dancehall years and years ago. Nobody knows how high the ceiling is because you can’t see it. Brigid says she’s seen it, when she leaves the fire-doors open first thing in the morning to clear out the faggy alcoholic smell of the place, but no one else ever has.
Liam, who wears polo shirts and has an ulcer, was none too impressed when he clocked Harry on the video entry-phone.
‘He with you?’ he said. I nodded, and Liam said nothing more, but I got a distinct chill. I knocked back my vodka and met Harry standing up already.
‘Bye, Liam,’ I said. Harry and he nodded to each other. I wondered why, and what I didn’t know.
We spun up towards Notting Hill Gate in the Pontiac. He turned in and started trying to park in a street designed more for sedan chairs than for Detroit’s finest.
The restaurant was built like a fishtank, full of laughing crowing rich and beautiful people. A pancake-faced public-school boy greeted Harry by name and took us to a desirable table. The ritual began to unfold: flicking non-existent crumbs from pristine white linen, ordering Chardonnay, sea bass, lentilles de Puy, glasses as clean as water, water sparkling or still, Madam?, napkins flick flick, fag packets on the table, matchbook contorted backwards like a fossilized sea anemone in the ashtray. It was late for lunch and most people were finishing their exquisite mousses and tiny coffees. Pancake-face sat down with us to take our order, took it, then came back and sat down again. He looked as if he had had a hard shift and was delighted to settle down for a breather, a glass of our wine and a nice chat.
‘How’ve you been then, Harry?’ he said.
Excuse me? That might very well be my line. He ignored me. Harry told him he’d been fine, thank you, and they talked for a moment or two about football. I considered leaving, but instead just murmured, ‘I exist, I exist’ quietly under my breath. Pancake-face was wondering where Harry went to school. The food arrived, brought by a lesser minion. Pancake-face finally left us to it, saying, ‘Well, I’ll see you later.’ Harry registered my annoyance, but said nothing. I began to hate him again.
‘I’m very sorry about last night,’ he said.
‘So you said,’ I said.
‘I don’t … um …’
Well, if Harry’s in difficulties when it comes to communication it’s bound to be something delicate, emotional, or sexual.
‘What don’t you?’ I said unforgivingly. He might as well imagine that this is all about whether or not I mind Eddie Bates fancying me.
‘I don’t think … I know from your point of view it’s not any business of mine, and past history, but I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to see Eddie again.’
Ha ha! I know why and you know why but you don’t know I know! I’ve no intention of ever seeing him again but you don’t know that either. You know nothing!
I played the innocent. ‘Oh, really? Why not?’
I nearly added, ‘I thought he was charming!’ but decided just to land him with the bare question. Put him on the spot. Hypocritical sod. Protecting me, indeed. Anyway he knew I didn’t find Eddie charming. He knew it automatically last night. We had been a thousand miles nearer to each other when he drove me home last night than we were now.
‘Because he’s not a very nice man.’
‘How fascinating!’ I cried. ‘Do tell.’
He lit up a cigarette, despite not having touched his stuffed pan-fried squid with coriander and ginger. They looked much nicer than my onion and parmesan tart with radicchio and olive salad.
‘I could tell you,’ he said, smoke curling up his face, ‘but then I’d have to kill you.’
Isn’t it funny what can make your heart melt? That line had been a running joke of ours for years. We had worn it thinner than an antique coin. It always made me laugh. Always, always. And did now. I hadn’t heard it or used it for … oh, all these ancient things.
I laughed. He laughed. He put his cigarette out. I took a mouthful of my food – it was good, actually. He smiled kindly at me. I said, ‘So tell me.’
‘Oh, it’s nothing, he’s just a pig with women. He has a wife who he’s horrible to, and he’s always here and there and running around, and I just wouldn’t want to see him running around on you, that’s all.’
Well, he was lying again, of course, but it was quite a sweet lie. Also I suddenly saw that he was jealous.
‘You’re jealous,’ I said.
He put his mouth into a funny sideways shape, and pondered for a moment.
‘Don’t know,’ he said shortly, as if the words were stuck.
‘But you might be.’
‘Don’t know,’ he said. And then: ‘No right to be.’
I didn’t want to talk about Eddie’s real badness, whatever it might be, and I didn’t want to talk about Harry’s feelings, let alone how I felt about them. I didn’t like all this having to choose between two dangerous lines of conversation.
So I said: ‘Would you like to try a bit of this tart?’ At least that’s what I meant to say. What came out was: ‘You bastard, you bastard, Harry, why did you do it you broke my heart and you ruined my fucking life and you never ever ever told me why, you bastard.’
He was as surprised as me.
I was as surprised as him.
We stared at each other for a moment.
‘Sorry,’ I said brightly. ‘Not sure where that came from.’
‘You know why,’ he said.
‘I don’t know why,’ I said.
‘If you still haven’t worked it out – it’s not possible that you don’t know why, so stop fucking around,’ he said. He stared at me and then shut his eyes for a second. Then he almost shouted: ‘Shit, why did you have to remind me that you disgust me?’
Disgust him? I disgust him? I disgust him? Disgust? What the fuck is going on with this boy? Hard words, Harry – hard words from a man who loved you, whose opin
ions you respected and liked and agreed with. Harry –
‘Why?’ I yelled. ‘Why? What are you talking about? You keep not telling me things and I am not fucking around.’ Suddenly it was just him and me, no context, no circumstances, no Cooper or Bates or anything. ‘You just lie to me and blank me, you won’t tell me why we’re here and you wouldn’t tell me why you left and you lied to Janie and you wouldn’t talk to Mum and you are a lying deceiving fucking toe-rag’ – toe-rag! I couldn’t manage any better – ‘and actually, last time but two that I saw you you all but called me whore and here you’re pretending to try to protect me from someone you say is mean to women and you have no fucking clue – I can’t believe you have a clue what you did to me I …’
I left the restaurant. I loved you so much, I loved you, I loved you. I was very confused. My brain was whirling and I was kicking a tree. A bus conductor looked at me. I turned west and ran down the road. Pigeons scattered before me. Harry wasn’t following me. After a couple of hundred yards I sat down on a bench. My leg ached.
It is not possible to be rational when you are being emotional. The blood goes to different parts of the brain. Mutually exclusive.
Where did all that come from?
Oh, it’s obvious. Oh, God. Blown it.
He must have known it all anyway. He knew I loved him then, we were just in love. Normal.
What is it I don’t know?
He says, cool and rational, that it is impossible for me not to know why he left me.
That doesn’t sound like a love reason. It would be quite possible for me not to know any complex emotional stuff going on in his head or heart. He knows for sure that he is unclear in that area. He’s got that far, at least.
It sounded more definite. A thing, that I don’t know. And didn’t know then. A thing from then.
Who knows what happened then? Who knows what was what, then?
Not me. Harry, but he’s not telling. Janie. But she’s not telling.
Anybody could know. Small world like ours. Maybe everybody knows, and that’s why it’s impossible for me not to know.
Not to know what?
*
I spent the rest of the afternoon in the bath. I steamed my brain into oblivion and my body into a scarlet blob. I washed my hair and gave myself a facepack. I was about to sugar my legs when I started crying again and realized that I was thinking about the old days, when you’d sugar your legs because your lover was due. I emerged from a doze to find myself thinking about Harry’s long flat belly in shadow under sheets. I dripped water all over the flat, wandering naked. I stopped to look at myself, scarlet, wet, older, with mascara sliding down my cheeks and wet hair plastering me. Kutchuk Hanem was only twenty-two when she was a flower not too far blown, and here I am, thirty-three. I used to be a fit woman, now I can’t even run away. My scars were livid. Why do I disgust you? What do you mean, remind you? What have you been trying to forget? The same thing that I don’t know?
Why do I mind?
I wondered for a moment if I still loved him. Well, I had to consider it. It was a possibility.
I decided no.
He was going to have been something else by now. Wasn’t going to be a criminal, masquerading in the motor trade, toadying to villains. He was going to have been something good. Something intelligent. He was going to have been something better.
He isn’t who he was when I loved him, and he isn’t who he would have had to have become for me to love him still.
I just want to know what it was.
I dragged on my clothes and my good sense and went out to fetch Lily. We made flapjacks and coloured in and played woodland creature dominoes, and then Fergus rang.
‘Sorry I couldn’t get back to you,’ he said. ‘Now listen. Bates has never been convicted of anything, but he has been … associated … with every kind of improper import-export, including drugs, arms, pornography, illegal hormones for beef cattle, used NHS beds to China, chemical purifiers to Latin America, you name it. There is a wife who lives in Monaco, where he never goes, otherwise his private life, if he has one, is private. He moves around a lot, likes to play the grand gentleman but quietly. Lives in that other world, you know, where people are so rich that no one dare ask, because the purest it gets is a car factory founded on Nazi slave labour. Don’t have anything to do with him. And don’t feed me stupid lines about friends.’
‘Why would a policeman want someone who was not a policeman to steal something from him?’
‘Steal what?’
‘Information.’
‘Because he’s fucking mad.’
‘Any more helpful reason?’
‘Because he can’t get it legally, because he wants it kept secret. Angeline, what’s going on?’
‘I don’t know …’
‘Any policeman in particular?’
‘Ummm …’
‘Any policeman you trust more than me? Angeline, please …’
‘A known to be, shall we say, flexible policeman.’
He was quiet for a moment.
‘There is an amount of internal … sweeping and dusting going on at the moment. It’s being done quietly. A number of officers of various ranks will be feeling nervous, and may wish to cover their backs. I think you should tell me what all this is about.’
‘Well, I think it’s over, anyway. I think, I hope. I’ll let you know. And thanks.’ I hung up, put Lily in the bath, got in with her, and we poured bottles of water over our heads until we were soaked. Then I chased her round the room with the hair dryer, covered her in anti-eczema cream, got into bed with her, and fell asleep.
TEN
Looking after Lily
The next day Lily wanted to wear her little pink gauze wings and tinsel halo to school. No problem. Brigid rang, wanting to borrow the car. No problem. Could she drop Lily at school, I wondered. No problem, she said. I like these days, when there is no problem.
And could she pick her up too, as I had to go round to Zeinab’s? Of course she could, and she’d give her some tea with Caitlin and the boys. People who say single mothers are lazy scroungers should see Brigid on the go. She does the work of ten women, and half mine too, and no she’s never had a penny off the state. She won’t even take child benefit, that every married mother in an Espace takes as her rightful pin money. ‘Helps pay for the piano lessons,’ I heard one bray across Holland Park one afternoon.
I was measuring up the cloth to take to Zeinab when the phone went. I didn’t answer. It was Harry, talking to the machine. He wanted me to call. I think not. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
Then Neil rang. I remembered enough to apologize to him for that row, shrunken in the perspective of time to a pinhead in my view, but perhaps still large in his. He said, oh, for God’s sake, no, I’m sorry too. I didn’t tell him anything about the results, direct or indirect, of his running out on me. I just asked him what Jim’s legal status was.
‘Why?’ he asked.
‘Why do you think?’
‘Ah … well, a natural parent can claim a child at any time,’ he said, ‘and has a prima facie right to custody of the child. However, an unmarried father does not automatically have parental responsibility for the child; he obtains it either by the mother’s written consent or by application to the court. That said, in any dispute the child can be made a ward of court by anyone, anyone at all, who is concerned for its welfare, in which case it will be a family division case and the judge will decide on the evidence of social workers and other witnesses what is in the best interests of the child, which are at all times paramount. You should remember all this, Angeline, we’ve been through it before. So what’s happened?’
‘Jim and his wife came to tea,’ I said.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said. ‘And?’
‘And he wants her. They want her. They’re applying for … oh, you know …’
‘It would help if you could be specific,’ he said.
Yes, and it would help if you weren’t so bloody patronizin
g … cool it.
‘They want her to live with them,’ I said. I’m not so snappy. Really. Really I like it when he talks like a textbook, it’s reassuring, and it’s not so much for him to expect me to respond in pidgin textbook myself. ‘Residence order,’ I said.
‘How much do you remember about how it works?’ he asked.
‘Just what we did before. Parental responsibility, residence order, all very straightforward,’ I said.
‘It won’t be this time,’ he replied. ‘Look, we’d better meet. Have you told your parents?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Best get them along – they’re a good weapon. I’ll look out all the papers from before and do a bit of homework. Tomorrow, day after do for you? Um … in the meantime, think about things. They will have to prove Lily will be better off with them than with you, that’s all really. Child’s welfare is paramount.’
‘But of course Lily’s better off with me …’ I began.
‘Then there’s no problem, is there?’ he said, with that tone of patronizing irony that made me realize I was talking garbage – or at least that what was obvious truth to me still had to be proved in court, which was quite a different thing.
*
Zeinab and I got quite a lot done. Our client was His Excellency General Dr somebody or other whose son was to marry a princessling in Jeddah, and wanted five outfits each, matching, for three dancers. Why were they getting it done in London? For kudos. Because it would cost more. And for discretion’s sake. I suspected the dancers were just for a private stag party. Many things are banned in Saudi, and many of them are available if you know where to look, so I’m told. Me, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been there. Why would I go to a country where a woman cannot go anywhere without a document signed by her husband or father – or son, or grandson if there are no other menfolk left – giving her permission? Even in Egypt, when I was there in the late eighties, when women who had been ‘emancipated’ for years were beginning to take to the veil again … that was enough for me. The Politeness Police coming round to check that all the dancers have their licences, and that nobody is too rude, and Saudi sheikhs paying off ageing performers to take the veil again on television. If a woman wants to wear hijab, fine. But when teenage girls are shot dead at bus-stops because their hair shows … that was Algeria. And all because 1,300 years ago Muhammad, who was employed by his first wife Khadija for over twenty years – she was his boss (and strangely enough Allah seems not to have revealed any of these woman-controlling truths until after she was dead) – said that people should only speak to his wives, his later wives, through a curtain. Women cause chaos among men. The idea that men might learn to control their own chaotic leanings, rather than control women, does not figure. But don’t get me started.