by David Nobbs
‘I have a complaint to make. I’d like to see the head waiter.’
‘I’m so sorry, madam? Are you sure I can’t…?’
‘No. I want the head waiter.’
‘Certainly, madam.’
The waiter slid off towards the kitchens. The two ladies were now riveted once again.
Helen turned to them, smiled, and said, ‘Can’t get the staff.’
‘Oh,’ said one of the ladies. ‘We think they’re very good here, don’t we, Doris?’
James, ashen-faced, leant forward and said, in a low voice, ‘What the hell are you up to?’
She gave him the sweetest smile.
‘Absolutely nothing, darling.’
He wanted to say that he was free all day Sunday, but he was damned if he was going to negotiate under duress.
The head waiter approached cautiously.
‘You wished to see me, madam?’ he asked.
‘I did indeed,’ said Helen. ‘I just wanted to say, this tea is so delicious. It’s perfect. I’ve had tea at the Ritz, but this surpasses it. I just wanted that message to go straight to the top.’
‘Oh. Oh, thank you, madam,’ said the head waiter. ‘I … the waiter told me you had a complaint.’
‘I did,’ said Helen, ‘but the antibiotics were effective, I’m glad to say.’
‘I’m so pleased, madam. And thank you. Thank you so much.’
He beetled off in much confusion.
James raised those great eyebrows, glad of them at that moment.
‘I know,’ said Helen. ‘Rather melodramatic. Not to say childish.’ She leant forward, and spoke in such a low voice that the two ladies would only be able to hear if they listened very carefully. ‘I’m sorry about that, but I’m actually a bit desperate. For five years, James, I have been discreet. I’ve been hidden away. I’ve known that you would never leave your wife. I’ve accepted the situation, because I’ve been so very much in love with you. I’ve ignored all my friends’ advice, my own doubts, the findings of my brain, which kept reminding me that I was an attractive woman throwing my life away on a man who wouldn’t commit …’ She took a tiny mouthful of sandwich. ‘I do believe this is bloater paste! How retro …’ She smiled, then looked suddenly serious. ‘… or couldn’t commit. The thing that I thought would never happen has happened and … James, I wish it hadn’t happened in this way. I can’t rejoice that a lovely woman like Deborah clearly was has been killed. I’d have rathered that she’d left you or had an affair.’
‘She never would.’
He thought of the red shoes and gave her a brief, uneasy glance. Her eyes held the gaze for a few seconds, and then she looked away. She took another dainty mouthful.
‘It’s quite tasty, actually. No, I dare say she wouldn’t, but here we are, we are free, or we’re going to be, and we have to keep seeing each other or wanting to see each other, otherwise … otherwise the situation could destroy us. I’m just warning you, darling, and I really don’t mean this as a threat, but I am not prepared to be hidden away for months and months. I know you can’t suddenly produce me to your family out of a hat, but we’ve taken risks, all sorts of risks, huge risks actually, really, and I’m not having you going totally cautious on me now. I long for you to be in my bed so much, hence my little joke over the waiter, which I’m rather ashamed of already. You didn’t really think I’d embarrass you that much, did you?’
‘I suddenly wondered how well I knew you.’
‘Oh, James. Well, it was a mistake, then. I wish I hadn’t done it, it was stupid, but I’m feeling … I can’t help it … excited. How can I not be? We can be free. We can marry. I’ll accept it if I can’t see you. Of course I will. It’s very difficult socially and we do still have to be very secretive, I accept that, I feel awkward too, I feel very uneasy about being happy at all, I’ve always thought Deborah sounded like a lovely person, but I suppose … I suppose I just wanted to exert myself a bit, frighten you a bit, give the message that things must change at least a bit. Mustn’t they?’
‘Of course they must. Have a scone.’
‘I’m not hungry.’
‘Nor am I, but I’m paying twenty-nine pounds ninety-five a head.’
‘Your silly idea.’
‘We must eat some of it. One or two of the waiters are from the Third World. Share a scone?’
‘OK.’
‘I’ll come on Sunday. Sunday lunch in one of those nice pubs near you, and then … one of the most fantastic fucks of all time.’
There was a crash of breaking china. A waiter hurried over.
‘So sorry,’ said one of the ladies at the next table. ‘So clumsy of me.’
James and Helen couldn’t look at each other, for fear they would laugh.
Saturday
The alarm woke James at seven-thirty, as usual. For the first time since Deborah’s death he knew immediately that he was alone. It was no less a shock.
He put on his dressing gown, went downstairs, made himself a cup of coffee and just one round of toast. He ate the first half with three-fruit marmalade and the second half with New Zealand honey.
He took his coffee through into the sitting room, put it on top of the piano on a Scottish crafts coaster – it showed basket weaving, as it chanced – that Deborah had picked up for a song near Loch Lomond. The song had been the ‘Skye Boat Song’. She had sung it beautifully, and had been given the set of coasters gratis as a reward. James gasped with sudden shock and sorrow at the memory of Deborah’s voice. Charles at that very piano, Deborah singing Schubert so charmingly, Valerie mortified that Deborah was singing Schubert so charmingly, everyone thinking how well it would have worked if Charles had married Deborah. Don’t. Don’t go down that road, James, or, for that matter, down any road.
Suddenly he felt very weak. How on earth was he going to cope with Gareth?
He began the simple process of moving the furniture away from the middle of the room, not quite touching the walls, no marks on the paintwork, please. After each mini-labour of Hercules he took a sip of coffee. Why was he so exhausted?
Partly because he’d taken another temazepam. He really must stop that tonight. No good would come of starting to rely on sleeping pills.
At last all the furniture had been moved to his satisfaction. There was a wide expanse of carpet for Gareth to torment him on.
He went into the kitchen, finishing his coffee as he did so. He washed up his breakfast things. Gareth was a very precise man. Gays often were.
He thought about his dinner with Fliss as he struggled upstairs. God, his legs were weak. It hadn’t gone too badly, on the whole. He had picked her up, which had pleased her. She had apologised unnecessarily for the state of her hair, which had looked fine to him, and the Chinese meal had been perfectly all right without touching the heights. In fact, it had been wonderful to see how much she had enjoyed her food and drink, especially drink, when Dominic hadn’t been there to frown.
He assembled his fitness outfit. Jogging pants, trainers and his grey Champneys T-shirt. He smiled as he thought of his visit to Champneys with Deborah. He hadn’t wanted to go, but he’d gone along with it and to his surprise he’d enjoyed it. It had all been a bit of a turn-on, being given treatment by attractive young women. He’d enjoyed feeling naughty by having a bottle of wine at dinner, and they’d made love twice in the five days, which was unusual in those later years.
Fliss had agreed that they didn’t want the service to be overly religious. She wasn’t religious, and James was a bit less religious than that. She’d told him that the Willoughby-Daltons had gone for a humanist funeral and a woodland burial. He had thought that was typical of her, to give good advice too late, so that it became a rebuke.
When he’d said that he intended to say a few words, she’d looked a bit put out, and had said, ‘I thought the vicar was doing the eulogy.’
‘He’s never met her,’ he’d said. ‘I’ll give the personal touch.’
‘Can you do it? Won�
��t you break down? Elspeth Fothergill-Haynes thought she could do it, and she broke down in floods of tears.’
Fliss always had examples from among her friends to warn you off anything she didn’t want. More than half of them were double-barrelled. James wondered if she chose them as friends because they were double-barrelled.
‘I can do it.’
‘In that case, why bother to have the vicar do it? Why bother to have a vicar at all?’
Good point, but he wasn’t going to admit it. Anyway, he didn’t want the responsibility of arranging the whole thing, and his mum would disapprove if there wasn’t a vicar, she would say, ‘This is a funny carry-on, James.’ And it might be a step too far for Deborah’s and Fliss’s parents, who were cutting short their pre-harvest holiday in Italy, and who were traditionally religious in the feudal manner of farmers in villages.
‘Well, if you’re going to speak I want to say something too,’ Fliss had said. She had always been competitive. Playing against her at tennis was hell. Partnering her was worse.
‘That’s fine, but three eulogies is quite a lot,’ he had said cautiously. ‘Could you find some other way? Do a reading?’
‘I’ll read a poem. Deborah loved poetry.’
‘Fine. That’s a really good idea. Two eulogies, a poem, two hymns, do you think? Both fairly cheerful, both singable by the tone deaf. Or do we want some non-religious music? A song, perhaps?’
The obvious thought had occurred to him. If they could get a piano, Charles could play. But if he’d suggested that, she’d have become competitive again, and found a long-lost cousin who could play the accordion. He’d decided that it was probably better not to mention it. Shame, though.
‘What about a James Blunt song?’ she had asked hopefully.
‘Deborah didn’t like James Blunt.’
Fliss couldn’t have looked more astonished if James had told her that Deborah was a member of a terrorist cell. But then she had suddenly grown excited. ‘I know,’ she’d said. ‘I’ll tell you what would go down really well. If we could have a piano, and Charles could play.’
‘Yes!’ he’d enthused. It was perfect now that Fliss had thought of it. ‘Yes. That’s a great idea, Fliss. I’d never have thought of that. Oh, well done. Do you know, I think together we’ve cracked it.’
‘I think we have.’
Agreement. Togetherness. Cracking it. Not experiences that had been common in the relationship between James and Deborah’s sister. She had once suggested a walking holiday for the two couples.
‘Where would we be walking?’ James had asked. ‘On eggshells?’
She had looked puzzled and said, ‘No. On Mull.’
The rest of the evening had passed peacefully and easily. Fliss had dissected Dominic’s many character flaws, and James had listened. Just in time, he had remembered that he had a photograph for her. He’d found it in a drawer in the bedroom, and had thought immediately that she would like it. It showed her with Deborah on the Rialto Bridge in Venice, with the Grand Canal an exquisite and animated background.
‘Oh, thank you,’ she’d said. ‘Thank you, James, that’s lovely.’
She’d looked at it for quite a long while.
‘I quite like the way I had my hair in those days,’ she’d commented.
He’d driven her home. She’d asked him in for a nightcap, but he’d refused on breathalyser grounds. They’d kissed quite warmly.
It had been a job well done.
The doorbell rang. Gareth. He hurried downstairs.
‘Double parked,’ said Gareth. ‘Can you help?’
James helped Gareth unload his instruments of torture from his garish red van – rowing machine, Pilates machine, exercise ball, three smaller balls, stability whatsit, and those things that he didn’t know what they were called, but you pulled and stretched with them. Then Gareth drove off to park, and James fitted the watch that told his heart-rate and tried to fit the black belt monitor that went tight round his chest and fed heart rate readings to the watch. Just as Gareth returned, whistling, the two ends of the belt sprang loose.
‘Shit,’ said James, lifting his T-shirt. ‘Can you do it?’
This moment of closeness embarrassed Gareth, because he was gay. Not being gay, it didn’t worry James at all.
Gareth slotted the two ends together, taking great care not to touch James’s flesh and give out a misleading signal.
Gareth set up the rowing machine in the kitchen. ‘Right, five minutes rowing while I set up the Pilates’, he said as he strapped James’s trainers onto the plates of the machine. ‘Nothing too severe now, nothing too severe at all, just a nice, gentle warm-up, twenty-one, twenty-two strokes a minute, steer very close to the Surrey bank round Mortlake. The lovely Deborah not up yet?’
James felt exhausted at the thought of beginning all that again. He was tempted to say that she’d gone to the shops, set off early to beat the crowds. Maybe he could keep up that fiction for months, throw in a couple of long weekends with her parents. But no, he felt even more exhausted at the thought of all the excuses he would have to make. No, there was no escaping it. He would have to drop his bomb-shell, shock and embarrass this nice young Welshman, tell the story that now bored him stiff, accept yet more sympathy, and all while exerting himself in unnatural and unpleasant ways.
‘She’s … um … Deborah’s dead, Gareth.’
Gareth turned and looked at him and was silent for at least twenty seconds, making it the longest silence there had ever been in their eight years of Saturday mornings.
‘Dead?’
He began the story on the rowing machine, and finished it on the Pilates machine. It was difficult to tell it amid all this exertion, and by the end he was fighting for breath as he lay there, pushing with first both legs and then each leg singly.
‘Oh, I’m so, so sorry,’ said Gareth, when he’d finished. ‘I can’t believe it, actually. She was always so … so full of life. I always used to say … now the circles, ten in each direction slow … slow, James, quality not quantity … I always used to say, “You should see James Hollinghurst’s wife. The lovely Deborah. She has more life in her little finger than some women have in their whole…” wider, James, stretch, make those circles really wide, really stretch those legs and height, let’s have some height … “their whole body.” I always used to say, “She doesn’t use my services, she doesn’t need to. Supple? There’s supple. She could have been…” that’s the ten, other direction now … “a limbo dancer.” Oh, I always loved it when she came in the room and we had a little chat, and to think that I’ll never see her again, I can’t hardly believe it, but listen to me going on and on about it and you have to deal with it every day, how much worse must it be for you, right, that’s your ten, off you come slowly and safely, very good, well done, James, are you sure you want to go through with any more of this, when you must be choked up with the tragedy of it all, I think you’re very brave.’
‘I’m fine.’
‘Right. Good man. Right, let’s carry on the usual routine, you know it, that’s right, standing as straight as you can and push back with both legs. Oh, I still can’t bloody believe it. Last week I was having a lovely chat with her about immigration in this very room, and now seven days later she’s with the angels, because she was an angel, well, you don’t need me to tell you that, I tell you, I tell you, James, it’s hard for me to believe, how much harder must it be for you?’
‘Gareth? May I ask you something?’
‘Of course. Ask anything you … that’s right, left leg now … you want.’
‘Gareth, I’m …’ He could hardly get the words out, he was so breathless, all the drinking these last few days had really affected his fitness levels. ‘… I’m very grateful for all your sympathy.’
‘Don’t mention it. Wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t sympathetic, would I, when a tragedy like this has burst through the—’
‘Gareth, please. That’s what I want to ask you.’
; ‘I’m sorry?’
‘To … well … to shut up about my tragedy.’
Gareth went brick red. He always blushed easily. He wasn’t at home in his body. His mouth opened and shut, just as it did almost all the time, but now no sounds were emerging. It was absurd. It was as if Dylan Thomas had been struck by laryngitis.
‘I’m sorry, you weren’t to know, but I just don’t want to talk about it any more. I’ve had three days talking about nothing else.’
‘Oh. I see.’
‘I’m sorry. I really didn’t want to be abrupt.’
‘No. That’s all right. I understand. I should have known. I should have thought. Off you come now. Slowly and safely. That’s right. How’s your heart rate?’
‘Twenty past two.’
‘What?’
‘The watch isn’t working properly.’
‘Do you know, I had one watch for seven years, no problem with it, I’ve had this a fortnight and it’s knackered. Probably made in Taiwan. Oh, well. Don’t really need it, I s’pose. You aren’t going to die. Except I’d have said that about— Sorry.’
He went brick red again.
‘Sorry. Right. Back on the rowing machine, while I dismantle this Pilates machine.’
James rowed faster this time. He rowed angrily, taking it out on himself. He was angry with himself for having taken pity on Mike. He was angry with himself for not having arranged to see Helen tonight. He could have been in bed with his gorgeous, gamine lover, their legs wrapped round each other, and he’d chosen to spend the evening with a whining, self-centred loser. What was wrong with him? He could still change it. He would change it.
And all the while Gareth talked, and he didn’t listen. Then there was a brief silence.
‘Oh, dear. Somebody must have walked over a grave,’ said Gareth. ‘Oops. Sorry.’
He went even redder than before.
Now there was silence again. James relished it. Gareth hated it. He could see the young Welshman, brought up on rivers of chat, searching for a new subject to broach.
‘So,’ said Gareth conversationally, ‘this German Pope, he’s had a few years at it now, how do you think he’s making out?’