Tilly said, ‘I think, at this precise moment, I have more peace of mind than I’ve had for months and months and months.’
‘Because of me?’
‘Partly because of you.’
‘What can I do’, William said, ‘to make it largely or entirely because of me?’
‘Nothing,’ Tilly said. Her voice was contented and faraway.
‘If there was anything bugging you,’ William said, ‘would you tell me?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Is there?’
‘What—’
‘Is there anything bugging you?’
Tilly rolled over and lay on her back.
‘I am strangely unbugged by having sex with you in the bed I shared with Henry.’
‘That’s not what I asked.’
‘I suppose’, Tilly said slowly, ‘that I do need to know about this girl.’
‘Do you?’
‘Yes. To – well, to get rid of her. In my mind.’
‘Would that help?’
‘I think so,’ Tilly said. ‘I think I could cope with it now. Write it down, tear it up, throw it away.’
‘Right,’ William said.
‘But don’t do anything, will you? If it happens, it happens. I’ll get Mum to make a wax image, she’d be brilliant at wax images.’
William propped himself up on one elbow and looked down at her.
‘It is so lovely,’ he said seriously, ‘to hear you sounding so happy again.’
Tilly began to laugh. She put her hands over her face and laughed behind them. William put a hand on hers and tried to pull them away.
‘Let me see—’
‘No,’ Tilly said, laughing. ‘No. I’m not wasting any of it.’
Chapter Fifteen
It took six attempts to reach Henry on his cellphone. Every time William dialled, for five patient times, an automated woman who sounded like someone from the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville told him that BellSouth regretted that the number he was trying to access was either switched off or out of range and why didn’t he just try later? But William didn’t want to try later. He had waited, deliberately, until both Sam and Corinne had gone home, and then he had settled down, amid the daily debris that he and Sam created in their office so effortlessly, to ring Henry in South Carolina.
‘You won’t put me off,’ William told the lady from BellSouth.
He put the telephone down and watched the shooting stars on his computer screensaver for a count of fifty. Then another fifty. Then he picked up his telephone and dialled again and Henry answered.
‘Hello?’ Henry said. He sounded as if he were at an airport or on a street.
‘Hi,’ William said. ‘It’s me. It’s William.’
‘Hey!’ Henry said. ‘That’s terrific! That’s great! How are you?’
‘Where are you?’ William said, ignoring him.
‘I’m driving,’ Henry said.
‘Driving?’
‘Yes,’ Henry said, ‘in a car.’
‘Whose car?’
‘My car,’ Henry said. ‘I am in my car driving down from Charleston to Beaufort, through the lowcountry.’
William said, slightly accusingly, ‘There’s someone with you.’
‘No.’
‘There’s someone singing.’
‘She’s called Lucinda Williams,’ Henry said. ‘She’s on the tape deck. She’s singing “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”.’
‘Never heard of her.’
‘No,’ Henry said. ‘You wouldn’t have. Where are you?s’
‘In the office.’
‘Why are you calling from your office?’
‘I don’t know,’ William said, ‘I just am.’
‘Look,’ Henry said, ‘it’s great to hear you but if you’ve rung to say all the kind of stuff you’ve been e-mailing me with, I’m going to cut you off.’
William held the phone hard.
‘I haven’t.’
‘So is this a buddy call?’
‘Kind of.’
‘I’m going to stop the car,’ Henry said. ‘Hold on.’
William could hear confused sounds of wind and wheels and the Lucinda girl singing her plaintive country song. Then Henry came back on the line and said, much more clearly, ‘It isn’t illegal to phone and drive here, but even with an automatic car, I can’t manage it with much aplomb.’
‘I haven’t seen you since October,’ William said.
‘No.’
‘I’d like to see you.’
‘Well, sure—’
‘I’m coming to New York,’ William said. ‘Will you come to New York to see me?’
Henry’s voice was startled.
‘What?’
‘Will you come up to New York for the weekend, to see me? I don’t want to come to Charleston.’
‘I don’t want you to come to Charleston—’
‘So will you come to New York?’
‘What is this about, Will?’ Henry said. ‘Is there some terrible thing that can only be said face to face?’
‘No,’ William said, ‘there’s no big anything but I’m fed up with e-mails and I need to see you.’
‘Need—’
‘Yes.’
‘I am very suspicious,’ Henry said. ‘Are you coming alone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yes. Susie’s sugared off to Spain.’
‘Bloody hell—’
‘It’s OK,’ William said, ‘I’m OK about it.’
‘So,’ Henry said, in a slightly softened voice, ‘you want to come to New York?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can’t do next weekend—’
‘Doesn’t matter. End of the month?’
‘Yes,’ Henry said. His voice grew warmer. ‘I’m sorry, mate. Sorry about bloody Susie.’
‘I told you. It doesn’t matter. I’m fine.’
‘I’ll book us a room,’ Henry said. ‘And we can do whatever two straight men do together in New York.’
‘Great,’ William said. He picked up a pen and wrote ‘NYC’ on a pad and then added a ring of explosion marks round the letters.
‘I’m glad you rang—’
‘Good.’
‘I must get on. I’m supposed to be in Beaufort by three. The sun is out. Will, the sun is out and there isn’t a cloud in the sky and soon every bird you can think of will be hatching like crazy and I’ll be there, recording the births.’
‘Great,’ William said again. He wrote ‘Tilly’ beside ‘NYC’ and then scored it out heavily. ‘See you. See you in New York.’
William told Corinne he was going on a mini-break. Corinne didn’t look up from the invoices she was sorting.
‘That’s nice.’
‘I’ll be back Monday. I’ll be in first thing on Monday.’
Corinne clipped the invoices together.
‘Getting some sun?’
‘Doubt it,’ William said. ‘It’s not what I’m going for. I’m going to see an old friend.’
Corinne put the invoices down on a pile of papers to her left and arranged the daily delivery sheet precisely in front of her.
‘It’s not what you’re thinking,’ William said. ‘I’m going alone.’
Corinne shrugged. William leaned over the reception desk so that his face was only inches from hers.
‘In fact,’ he said, ‘I’d be grateful if you would keep this to yourself. You’re the only person I’m telling.’
‘Why?’
‘Because anyone else would probably try and stop me.’
‘Oo,’ Corinne said sardonically, ‘very cloak-and-dagger.’
‘Yes.’
She looked up at him for the first time.
‘Hope it’s worth it.’
‘Yes,’ he said. He smiled at her. ‘Thanks.’
‘What’ll I say, if anyone asks where you are?’
‘They won’t.’
‘Sam—’
‘Thinks I’m just having an ordin
ary weekend.’
‘And—’
‘Tilly?’
‘Yes.’
‘She might think’, William said, with the smallest air of satisfaction, ‘that I’ve gone to Spain.’ He smiled at Corinne again. ‘See you Monday,’ he said.
William hated luggage, hated having things to carry. He never carried a bag or a briefcase, never took with him anything that wouldn’t fit into coat or jacket pockets. He had tried, for two years, to explain to Susie that he didn’t mind actually shopping per se, but shopping led to bags and parcels that required to be carried, and he neither wished to carry them, nor to see her doing so. The only time he’d met her parents, during a sensationally awkward overnight stay in Wellingborough, he’d thrown a T-shirt, a disposable razor and a toothbrush on the back seat of the car he was hiring, and felt himself quite burdened. Susie had two zip-up bags, a plastic box full of make-up and a beach basket crammed with shoes. She’d looked at the back seat.
‘I see,’ she said. ‘Covered for all eventualities.’
For New York, William took bathroom kit, socks, underwear and a black T-shirt he bought at Heathrow.
Shopping at airports didn’t count since whatever you bought could be put into the bag you had been obliged to bring anyway, and therefore did not require extra carrying. To the T-shirt, William added sunglasses, spearmint gum, and a copy of The New Yorker to get him in the mood. He did not pack any of these, but put the sunglasses on, the gum in his pocket and The New Yorker under his arm as the mark of a nonchalant international traveller. Then he went through security to the departures lounge and bought himself a beer and wondered, vaguely and pleasurably, why he felt as if he was doing something illicit.
Tilly had, after all, only asked him once, and not in the least forcibly, not to do anything further about Henry. In fact, when he thought about it – which he had, a surprising amount, for him – it was pretty easy to see that Tilly had said, ‘Please don’t,’ in the way people do when they mean the complete opposite. If, after all, you pretend not to want something, you are absolved from all the subsequent public consequences and responsibilities of not, in the end, getting it. It wasn’t hard, William thought, to see Tilly’s ruse for what it was – please, she was really saying, please go and find out what Henry is really up to, so that I can come to terms with it, and set it aside, and get on with the next stage in my life. William was very interested indeed in the next stage of Tilly’s life, more interested in fact – he signalled to the barman for a second beer – than he was quite easy with. When he thought about Tilly, remembered being with Tilly, caught somewhere, unawares, the scent of Tilly, something to do with Henry, some undefined and uncomfortable thing to do with Henry, interposed itself and caused William to check himself. William did not want to be checked. Susie was in Spain, Henry was in Charleston: why should they, far away as they were, still seem able to impose obligation? There was nothing William could do about Susie, nothing he ever had been able to do about Susie, but Henry was another matter. Drinking his beer, and comfortably conscious of a girl three bar stools away gazing at him with undisguised interest, William told himself that, whatever he was going to do for Tilly that weekend, he was also purposefully going to do something for himself. He drained his glass, winked at the girl on the bar stool and ambled off towards the departures gate with his New Yorker under his arm.
Henry had booked a room in a chic, bleak hotel on West 44th Street.
‘Actually,’ Henry said, ‘a friend booked it for me. He works for Delta.’
William dropped his bag on the bed. It was in an alcove with windows like steel-rimmed portholes. The bed cover was charcoal grey.
‘So you got a free flight.’
‘No.’
William peered through a porthole.
‘This looks at nothing.’
‘It’s New York, William.’
‘I don’t remember it being so dark.’
‘Canyon living,’ Henry said. He went into the bathroom. He called, ‘Nice to see you, Will.’
‘You too,’ William said.
‘You look different—’
‘You too,’ William said again. He came and stood in the bathroom doorway, watching Henry pee. ‘You’re thinner.’
‘I shouldn’t be,’ Henry said. ‘Southern food is as un-PC as you can imagine. Maybe it’s being busy.’
‘Yes.’
Henry shook himself and zipped up his trousers.
‘Tilly said I’d hate Southern food.’
‘Did she?’
‘She said they fried everything and then doused it in sugar. She’d have a fit if she met a Moon Pie.’
‘A what?’
‘It’s a great biscuit thing, like a biscuit sandwich, full of marshmallow. It is completely, utterly gross. It sells millions, millions and millions. It even has its own Cultural Club.’
William grunted. He moved away from the bathroom doorway and surveyed the bedroom.
‘Cosy, here.’
‘It’s cool, Will.’
‘What are we going to do?’
Henry went past him and picked up his jacket from where he had slung it across a chrome-framed chair.
‘We’re going to have a drink,’ Henry said, ‘and then maybe we can stop talking like people in a bus queue.’
Henry’s friend from Delta had recommended a bar on 2nd Avenue. He had also given Henry a list of restaurants, the numbers to call for sports fixtures and three recommended musicals, two of which, as William pointed out, were British.
‘He thinks I’m a hick and a barbarian,’ Henry said.
‘And is he right?’
Henry ignored him. He pushed William’s beer across the table.
‘So,’ Henry said, ‘here you are in New York. There is Susie in Spain. Is that what this is about?’
‘I told you,’ William said, ‘I told you I was fine about Susie going. She really annoyed me, the way she did it, because it was the usual unilateral Susie decision, but I don’t miss her.’
‘Oh?’
‘I don’t.’
‘Will, you must feel something—’
‘No. Relief, maybe. Bit of guilt—’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the relief, I suppose.’
Henry eyed him.
‘I see. And the business?’
‘Good,’ William said, ‘growing. Not as fast as I’d like, but growing. Sam is not quite an asset. He’s not a liability either, but he’s not the asset I’d like him to be. Good at figures though.’
‘And you’re still living where you were living?’
‘Yes,’ William said. ‘I – well, I thought of sharing again, but maybe the time isn’t right.’
‘With a woman?’
William looked at his beer. Then he looked up, past Henry, around the bar, and particularly at two black men and a red-haired woman all dressed entirely in leather. The woman had hair to her waist and python cowboy boots.
‘Talking of women—’ He stopped.
Henry said, ‘Do you want to do this now? Within two hours of meeting?’
‘If I don’t,’ William said, ‘I’ll be waiting for the right moment all weekend and it will never come and then I’ll be on the plane again and it’ll be too late.’
‘OK,’ Henry said.
William picked up his beer and looked at Henry over it.
‘Did you get your hair cut in Charleston?’
‘Atlanta, actually.’
‘Oh my God, pardon me.’
‘Shut it.’
‘Well, it’s too short.’
‘It will grow,’ Henry said.
‘You look like something out of the Citadel. New Squaddie Atkins.’
Henry said ruefully, ‘You’re not the first person to say that.’
William banged his beer triumphantly down on the table.
‘Gotcha. Who is she?’
Henry bent his head.
He said, to the table top, ‘Who do you bloody think?’
Henry went on looking at the table top.
‘Think.’
William thought.
‘Oh.’
Henry raised his head.
‘Oh?’
William said, ‘Not Gillon—’
‘Why not Gillon?’
William waved his arms and hands about. ‘Oh my God, Henry, because she’s, well, she’s fine but she’s sort of strange and she’s the one who asked you to Charleston so it isn’t really on, is it, and, anyway, she’s Tilly’s friend. What are you doing mucking about with Tilly’s friend? And what the hell is she doing mucking about with you?’
Henry said in a low voice, ‘She’s miserable about it.’
‘About what? About fucking you the minute you stopped fucking Tilly?’
‘Don’t shout,’ Henry said. ‘Henry, I’ll bloody shout—’
‘No,’ Henry said with emphasis. ‘No, you will not. I told you that if you started lecturing me again, I’d cut you off. And I will. Cut it. Do you hear me, Will? Cut it.’
William leaned across so that his face was close to Henry’s.
‘What’ll this do to Tilly? What’ll Tilly feel when she knows this?’
Henry set his jaw.
‘Sad and angry.’
‘Is that all you can say? You behave like this with someone Tilly liked and trusted, and that’s all you can say?’
‘Yes.’
‘Are you really the hard-hearted sod you’re giving such a good impression of?’
‘You’ll decide that,’ Henry said. ‘Won’t you?’
William sat back and spread his hands on the table.
‘Gillon. Little—’ He stopped. He said, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to tell her.’
‘Tell who?’
‘Tell Tilly that it’s Gillon.’
‘Why should you tell her anything?’
‘Because you haven’t got the guts.’
‘How do you know?’
William said nothing. Henry leaned across the table towards him.
‘William,’ he said, ‘William, have you come all the way to New York to ask me who I’m having a relationship with in order to be able to go back, knight on white charger, and tell Tilly and then comfort her?’
William shrugged.
‘Why’, Henry said persistently, ‘has it become your job to know how best to deal with Tilly?’
Girl From the South (v5) Page 21