by David Nobbs
‘How exactly did it happen?’
She didn’t want to know. It was irrelevant. And he didn’t want to tell her. It was pointless. But there was no other way to deal with it, and he heard himself starting off on the tale yet again. The Porsche. Diss.
‘One odd thing, she—’
Suddenly he realised that he didn’t want to tell Helen about the mystery of the red Prada shoes.
‘She what?’
‘Nothing.’
To tell her would seem like a betrayal of Deborah, a revelation of a secret. This surprised him.
‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’
Oh, God.
‘No, I was just going to say that she always thought East Anglia was flat and boring, so I’m surprised she was going there.’
It sounded lame, but he just couldn’t mention the shoes.
‘Oh. Right.’
She knew that he hadn’t been going to say that. He could hear it in her voice. He could even sense that she was thinking of saying, ‘Maybe she has a lover there,’ but had decided not to say it. And, in thinking that she was thinking of saying that, he articulated the thought to himself for the first time. There really was no other explanation for the red shoes.
One of them had to say something pretty quickly, or this conversation was going to be a disaster.
If only she was there. If only he could kiss that small, slightly pouty, deeply sexy mouth. If only they didn’t need words. For this emotional situation, there were no words.
‘Can you come over?’ she asked.
‘Darling, I’d love to see you, of course, God, I long …’ to unroll your tights and kiss your slender thighs, to fondle your pert little breasts, to gently bite your stiff nipples, ‘… to see you. But … it’s not possible tonight. I have phone calls to make. It’s just not possible.’
‘Tomorrow, then?’
‘I think tomorrow’s going to be very difficult too, sweetheart.’ He began to tell her all the things he would have to do tomorrow. The thought of them all, at the end of this long day, exhausted him. He was going to yawn. No. No. He mustn’t.
‘I do so want to see you, darling, but you must see that it’s difficult.’
‘Oh, I do. I do. It’s just … it seems a shame. I want to help you through this.’
‘And I want your help. It’s just …’
It’s just that there’s no acceptable formula for appropriate social behaviour in such circumstances. Couldn’t say that.
‘Look. You finish at lunchtime, don’t you, Fridays? Let’s … I know. I’ll meet you for afternoon tea at Whistler’s Hotel.’
That wouldn’t be too dangerous if somebody saw them. He could take a folder with him and put it on the end of the table, ready to pretend to be discussing business in the unlikely event of anybody he knew being in that slightly raffish hotel.
‘Afternoon tea?’
‘Well, yes. It seems … I don’t know … appropriate.’
‘Well, OK. Yes. Fine. Oh, James.’
So many things in that ‘Oh, James.’ Shock. Sympathy. Amazement. Hope. Frustration. Love. Fear. Desire. Self-doubt. Sorrow too, because she was not a cruel person. So many things, and he could sense them all.
‘Whistler’s at four, then, Friday.’
The light was fading. Wispy clouds were floating very slowly across the sky. They were tinged with subtle colours, mauves and pale yellows and salmon that matched the walls of the spare bedroom. In the north-west the sky was beginning to darken to a fiery red. Islington glowed. Three small boys, normal bedtime suspended, were kicking a football among the parked Audis as they drifted homewards. How could everything be so normal, and so beautiful, on this of all days? He took a large gulp of his drink. He needed it.
It was past ten o’clock now, too early to phone Max and too late to phone anybody else. He realised that he was very hungry. He went to the fridge-freezer, Deborah’s pride and joy – Deborah! Oh, God. He would never see her again.
There were so many bits of things in the fridge section. Delicious leftovers hidden under foil and cling film. He couldn’t cope, couldn’t choose.
He raised his glass to his lips and found that it was empty. He pressed the glass against the fridge freezer and it filled with an avalanche of ice. No. He mustn’t. There was Max to ring.
He dropped the ice into the Belfast sink in the crowded utility room – my God, he’d have to learn to use the washer and the dryer. And the ironing board. He could take things round to Helen but was she an ironer? She didn’t look like an ironer. Five years, five years of sex, and so much he didn’t know about her.
He uncorked a bottle of Brouilly. Well, it was less dangerous than spirits.
He opened a tin of tomato soup, heated it rapidly, began to eat it eagerly. Lovely. There was something in it, some secret ingredient, that made the thought of it irresistible to men. Halfway through, as always, it began to disgust him. He struggled on for a bit, then poured water into the soup to weaken the mixture, and poured it down the sink.
Sardines. He had a craving for sardines. A bit strong for the Brouilly, but this wasn’t an evening for purists.
Halfway through the tin he suddenly felt absolutely disgusted by the taste of tinned sardines. He chucked the tin into the elegantly concealed waste bin.
He began to feel very uncomfortable in the kitchen. It was Deborah’s room, friendly, lived-in, foody, attractive but unpretentious and rather higgledy-piggledy.
He remembered that there was a box of chocolates in the living room. It was up to him to finish them now.
No need now to defer to Deborah’s wants. He chose the marzipan one from both levels, chewed them greedily, not popping them into his mouth whole as Deborah insisted. Manners hardly mattered now.
Half a tin of tomato soup, half a tin of sardines, two chocolates filled with marzipan. It was not the best three-course meal he had ever eaten.
He went to the phone. He would ring Helen, go straight round, fuck her most tremendously.
He dialled her number, then put the phone down hurriedly.
He decided to make a list of everything he had to do tomorrow. That calmed him. That brought a bit of instant order into his life.
He sat at the mahogany table in the small dining room with the burgundy walls which were just a little darker than the Brouilly, and there, where they had hosted so many little dinner parties over the years, he began his list.
Vicar. (Never met him. Will he be cross because I never ever went to church?)
Funeral Director. (The Hutchinsons used Ferris’s Funeral Services.)
The Hutchinsons. (Were Ferris’s Funeral Services any good?)
Marcia. (Tell her the bad news. Cut her off if she offers help i.e. her body.)
Vernon and Ursula Norris. Tom and Jen…
Oh, sod it. Do it tomorrow.
He dropped the list into the waste bin.
He switched the television on, flicked though the channels, saw a pathologist cutting out the left eye of a middle-aged man and dropping it into a bottle, a panellist in a panic as he thought of the ridicule he was going to get from his workmates after he’d failed to name the capital of Hungary, a C-list fashion designer eating leeches in a mangrove swamp, an audience roaring as an overpaid chat show host held out a box of chocolates to a pretty actress and said, ‘Can I give you one?’, a pathologist cutting up a pretty girl, a celebrity chef cutting up a bulb of fennel, blood pouring from the stomach of a woman in a crypt, an ugly twenty-two-stone man with a horrendous paunch throwing a dart at a board, a lion eating a cheetah, a pathologist cutting up a gay young man, a manly Rock Hudson trying to seduce a virginal Doris Day, a pathologist cutting up a very obese man, a celebrity chef cutting up a loin of pork, and two sloths copulating very … well … slothfully.
He switched off, poured himself another glass of Brouilly, went to the waste bin, rescued his list, went back to the dining room, stretched the list out on the kitchen table, trying to iron it with his hands, add
ed one more name, Mike … Oh God, should he invite Mike, how would he behave? … He began to think about Mike, once his best friend, now a wreck. Memories of happier times with Mike. Lots of drinking. He took a couple more sips of the Brouilly. His head dropped.
He woke suddenly, to find himself face down on a crumpled piece of paper covered in traces of tomato soup and sardine oil. He had no idea where he was. At first he felt that Deborah’s death was part of a dream. Then he was wide awake and standing up and knocking his red wine all over the carpet.
‘Oh, shit,’ he shouted to nobody.
What did you put on red wine? White wine? Salt? Lavatory paper? He tore off some toilet rolls and stamped around on them, watching them go red. Then he remembered that Deborah had some stuff that worked wonders. He rummaged around under the sink, found the stuff, stood up, bashed his head on the edge of the cupboard door, swore violently to the empty room, and worked away on the stain, with moderate success.
Max. He was supposed to be ringing Max.
He felt as though he had been asleep for several hours, but it was only twenty to twelve. He dialled his son’s mobile number very carefully, feeling dismayingly drunk.
‘Hi, Dad. How are you?’
He’d never get used to phones that showed you who was ringing. He didn’t like them. It cut into the preliminaries, the careful approach to difficult subjects. He was thrown by Max’s cheeriness. How could he destroy that carefree youthful happiness? He felt about a hundred and five.
‘I’m fine, Max. Bit drunk …’ get that in before Max did, ‘… but fine.’
‘Great to hear from you, Dad.’
‘Not really.’
‘What?’
‘I’ve got some terribly bad news, Max. It’s your mum. She’s …’
He couldn’t say the word.
‘What? Not…?’
Max couldn’t say the word either.
‘She was in a very bad car crash, Max. I’m afraid … I’m afraid she was killed.’
‘No!’
James shuddered. He had fantasised about something that could cause his son such grief. In that moment he realised just how much he loved Max.
‘I’m afraid so, Max. Max, at least it was instant. She didn’t suffer.’
But Max was clearly too shocked, too bereft, to even care about that at that moment, and as he heard the sorrow of his distant son, James felt real sorrow too. He told Max a few more details. By now the driver of the Porsche was a homicidal villain. They needed a villain, father and son, separated by thousands of miles.
James told Max about his conversation with Chuck, but he could tell that his long-lost sister hardly registered in the ghastly slipstream of his mother’s death. Max was in deep shock. He told Max who he’d rung (omitting Helen) and Max wasn’t interested. He asked Max if there was anyone he’d like him to ring, and he was too numb to care.
‘So when’s the funeral?’ he asked eventually.
‘I don’t know. Rather dependent on when you can come.’
‘I’ll phone Mr Jellico tonight, and then I’ll check the airlines. Oh, Dad, I can’t believe this. Not Mum.’
‘I know. If anyone was indestructible, it was her.’
‘Dad?’ Suddenly Max sounded young, younger than his twenty-two years. Suddenly he sounded like a boy who needed his father. ‘I’ve got some leave owing. I could stay a bit after the funeral. Like a week maybe.’
A week. A whole week with Max. James felt dismayed. He felt dismayed that there would be a whole week in which it would be very hard, even downright dangerous, to see Helen. He felt dismayed that his behaviour, his desire, his love had led him into becoming a man who was dismayed at the thought of his son’s staying for a week.
‘A week. That would be wonderful, Max. That would be simply great.’
James was beginning to realise that things were not going to be as easy as he had thought. If only life was a fantasy.
Thursday
The alarm woke James at half past seven, as usual. He woke slowly, and from a long way off. His head was heavy. His sleep had been deep but troubled.
He turned to face Deborah, reached out with his right hand to stroke the ample curve of her admired and envied buttocks, very very gently, so gently that he wouldn’t wake her if she was fast asleep, but would stimulate her to a faint moan of yawned pleasure if she was sleeping lightly, and, if she was already awake, would reassure her that he was still fond of her, even though he was no longer interested in the glories that had once banished all thoughts of early-morning tea from the first minutes of the day.
There were no curves. There were no buttocks. His arm felt only space, and suddenly all the events of the day before came flooding back. His head was heavy because he had drunk too much, and because he had taken a temazepam tablet when sleep wouldn’t come, when the empty bed that he had dreamt about had been more than he could bear.
Philip had said that he would ring at eight. He hoped he would. He would ask him to come and help. He couldn’t face everything that had to be done without some form of support. And Philip was easy, reliable, calm, methodical. In his adoration and admiration of Charles he sometimes forgot how much he liked Philip.
He took a shower, and washed his hair, removing any traces of tomato soup and sardine oil that he might have picked up when he’d fallen asleep on his list.
If only he could just leave, just pack a suitcase and go to Helen’s.
He looked out of the window. It was another stunning Wimbledon and barbecue day, so beautiful even in Islington, so inappropriate. A faint residue of mist softened the sunlight.
He shaved, cleaned his teeth; his gums were bleeding, it was the tension, but he must check to see if he’d remembered to make another appointment at the hygienist’s.
He dressed for work, remembered that he wasn’t going to work, took off his suit and put on jeans and a denim shirt, decided they weren’t respectable enough or sad enough, took them off and was naked except for his purple pants when Philip rang.
‘How are you?’
‘Fine. Well, you know.’
‘I can imagine. James, would you like me to come over?’
‘Do you know, Philip, I really would. Can you? Is it all right?’
‘No problem. My statistics will all still be there tomorrow, and I’m pretty much my own boss, you know.’
‘There’s such a lot to do and I think I’m still in shock.’
‘You will be. You must be.’
Yes, I must, thought James. Even if I’m not, and I’m not sure if I am, I must seem to be. God, this is going to be hard.
He selected a pair of black trousers and a dark blue shirt. With a black belt and black shoes he would look sad and dignified without actually looking as though he was in mourning.
It dawned on him that Helen might ring while Philip was there. For years she had been unable to ring him at his home. It had upset her occasionally, although most of the time she had accepted it as sensible and inevitable. Today she would feel that she could ring, and so she would. It would be a defining moment for her. How awful it would be if she did.
He started to put on his shirt and then stopped. He was almost naked, it was early morning, it wouldn’t be so terrible, this morning, to phone her in the altogether.
He took off his shirt and his purple pants, picked up the cordless phone, and went into the spare bedroom, far from prying photographs. He sat on the bed and dialled.
Her voice was sleepy.
‘You’ve woken me up.’
It was a rebuke.
‘You know I don’t work Thursday mornings.’
Helen and her friend Fiona ran a smart little dress shop in Chelsea. It was quiet enough for them to take it in turns to attend, except on Saturdays. James thought they were playing at it, and had been unwise enough to say so once. It was not a thing you would say twice.
‘Sorry, darling, but I needed to speak to you.’ He amended the sentence hurriedly. ‘I wanted to speak to you.’
‘That’s nice.’
She was mollified. He breathed a sigh of relief. He began to be glad that he had taken his pants off. Things would have been tight.
‘Are you naked?’ he asked.
‘Of course. Are you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, James. Oh, James, my darling. Are you…?’
‘Very. Oh, Helen.’
Her pouty mouth. Her pert breasts. Her slim arms. Her disturbingly neat bottom. Her pale soft skin. Her wide green eyes.
‘Oh, Helen. Oh, my God.’
It was so quick. Absurdly quick. Fierce, painful, glorious, uncontrollable yet perfectly synchronised.
‘God, that was good. Oh, Helen darling, you are so unbelievably lovely, my darling. Um …’ The gear change was going to be difficult, very difficult. ‘Um … well, I’d better get dressed, I suppose. My brother Philip’s coming round to help. There’s such a lot to do.’
‘Poor you. I wish I could be with you.’
‘I know. So do I. Um … the … um … the thing is, Helen … oh, God, I wish you could be with me, but the thing is …’ Oh, Lord, this was difficult. ‘The thing is … I thought maybe you might phone me today, but Philip’s going to be here and … um … it could be awkward … a bit.’
There was a moment’s silence.
‘Is that why you rang?’
‘No. Well, I mean … no, I really wanted to … you know … what we did … but yes, I knew I had to talk to you about this. Obviously Philip doesn’t know anything about us, and it would be very hard to explain.’
‘I understand.’
‘But you’re not happy. I can tell you’re not happy.’
‘Well … I do understand, James. I can see the difficulties. It’s just … nothing’s changed.’
‘It’s early days. I want these next days to be dignified in memory of Deborah. She deserves that.’
‘I know. I agree. I never wanted to hurt her, James. You know that. That’s why I accepted … everything. But now … well, it’s a bit galling to find that nothing has changed.’