by Hilary Boyd
Jeanie’s heartbeat had returned to normal as she held her granddaughter’s hand along the line of suspended wooden bricks, but she didn’t dare look at Ray.
‘Go on,’ she challenged him, ‘you do it.’ She pointed to the smooth, round log which swung lazily on its moorings, smugly challenging all comers.
‘If you hold my hand,’ he grinned.
‘No chance . . . look, Ell.’ She pointed at Ray. ‘Ray’s going to walk across the wobbly log without falling off.’
She never thought he could, but without a word Ray hopped gracefully on to the supporting block, stretched his arms out like a tightrope walker and stepped coolly on to the log. It hardly moved as he crossed, just shook slightly with his weight. As he reached the other end, Jeanie heard clapping, and turned to see a group of adults and children who had gathered to watch his performance.
A little boy was jumping up and down in excitement. ‘Do it again, do it again.’
Ray hesitated. ‘OK, once more.’
‘Show-off!’ she teased him, when the audience had gone.
‘You made me.’
‘True . . . so when did you learn to do that?’
‘I ran away and joined the circus as a boy.’
Jeanie looked hard at him.
‘OK, I’m trained in aikido – grounding and balance.’
‘Martial arts?’
‘Yup, but not very martial, aikido is as much about the spiritual . . . I’ll explain it one day. I have a school, club, down at the Archway.’
Jeanie began to understand where that impression of learned calm came from – and Ray’s obvious fitness.
Ellie had spotted a couple of older boys and was following them cautiously around the trees on the edge of the play area.
‘Chanty and Alex are away next week . . . Brittany. So I won’t be here,’ Jeanie said, not looking at Ray. She felt jumpy, on edge with him so close.
‘Meet me anyway.’
‘What do you mean?’ She stared at him.
‘I mean . . . meet me, Jeanie.’ His voice was suddenly low and intense, his grey-green eyes – Dylan’s eyes – alight.
‘I . . . I can’t.’
‘Can’t or won’t?’
Jeanie sighed in exasperation. ‘Ray, I’m married, I can’t just meet you. I hardly know you.’
‘It’s just a drink! I wasn’t suggesting anything inappropriate, although . . .’ He couldn’t help smiling as she glared at him.
‘Just a drink,’ he repeated, clearly repentant. They both attempted to laugh, but the sound was forced and tense. Jeanie glanced quickly round the playground, and wondered that the others hadn’t seen what was happening between her and this tormenting man.
‘I’m sorry.’ He saw her sudden distress. ‘It was an impulse. I . . . well, it’s a while since I’ve felt like this . . . I thought it might be fun.’
‘I said, I can’t.’ But her reply held a certain reluctance, which he couldn’t have failed to notice.
She watched as he reached into his jacket and pulled out a card. ‘If you change your mind,’ he said as he handed it to her.
The walk back passed without Jeanie noticing. Her body, with Ray’s card burning a hole in her jeans pocket, seemed to have come alive, as if every cell had suddenly been sparked out of a long torpor. The reality was that for the first time in a decade . . . no, she corrected herself, for the first time in her whole life, she was faced with a physical desire that threatened to stop her heart.
Her courtship with George had been sedate, she remembered. She’d been carried away by his quiet gallantry – every door held open for her, his refusal to allow her to pay for anything, to go home on her own – this in a time of bra-burning and rampant feminism. And he’d been a droll, amusing companion who planned every evening like a military operation, taking her to theatre in the park, foreign films, pubs by the river. Her work as a nurse was stressful and exhausting, badly paid, and it had been so restful to know that at the end of the day George would pick her up in his white convertible MG and whisk her off for yet another treat.
Then her father had died. Out of the blue, working on yet another sermon, he had simply keeled over with a massive heart attack. Her distraught mother had found him when he didn’t answer her call to supper, face down on his text, stone dead. George had taken charge, coming with her to Norfolk, finding the funeral directors, informing the relatives, organizing egg and ham bridge rolls for the wake, taking the death certificate to the town hall. He hadn’t imposed on her and her mother’s grief, just been silently strong and supportive. And Jeanie had fallen in love with him.
But the physical attraction had been different with George, and nothing, she thought now, that compared with the fireworks one look from Ray could arouse. She pushed open the white picket gate that led to Ellie’s house, hardly able to deal with the complex emotions she was experiencing.
8
‘We can’t put Rita next to Danny, he’s such a bore,’ Jeanie remonstrated.
George pulled a face. ‘That’s not very nice.’ He tapped his pen on the tidily compartmentalized diagram that he had spent hours constructing and that now lay between them on the kitchen table, finally circling Rita’s name and drawing an arrow to the other side of table one. ‘It’s only dinner; they can move around after the main course. OK, let’s put her between me and Alistair.’
Jeanie scrutinized the new order. ‘No, that won’t work because it leaves Sylvie next to Alistair and we can’t have husbands and wives together.’
‘This is a mess! We’ve been doing it for hours and we haven’t even sorted one table.’ George threw his pen down.
‘Tell you what.’ Jeanie’s face brightened. ‘Why do we have to stick to this stupid man–woman–man placement? Why don’t we just put all the names in a hat and pick the first ten for table one, second ten for table two, etc? It’ll be original and everyone’ll be amused. Let’s live dangerously, shake it up.’
George looked anxious, then she watched him control himself.
‘Hmm . . . OK. Yes, it could work. But what if I’m next to Marlene?’ They both started to laugh.
‘Tough.’
‘And you get stuck with Danny . . . or Simon D.? Is that still tough?’
Jeanie frowned, ‘Of course not. This doesn’t apply to me, it’s my birthday. If I get a rum pick I’ll change it, but the rest of you will have to fend for yourselves. I’m over these tired, middle-class conventions.’
George grinned. ‘OK. Could be explosive, though.’
‘I hope it is.’
He got up and fetched the salad bowl from the side and they spent the next ten minutes cutting out the names to fill the four tables.
‘Who’ve you got?’ Jeanie closed her hand over her two choices.
‘Your not-so-interesting aunt and Jola’s boyfriend. That’s not fair, he doesn’t even speak English. You?’
Jeanie smiled. ‘Bill and John Carver . . . how lucky is that?’
‘You cheated.’ George snatched the papers from his wife’s hand and searched for any identifying marks.
They began to laugh again.
‘Aunt M. is good value, she’s the generation who knows how to sing for her supper.’
‘Not necessarily conversation you’d enjoy, though.’ George shrugged, smiling. ‘Look, it’s your party, this is a good idea; let’s just finish the rest.’
‘OK, but tea first.’ Jeanie got up to fill the kettle. ‘I wish Aunt Norma could come, I’ll miss her. I can’t believe she’s doing a walking holiday at her age.’ As she spoke she heard herself utter the dreaded phrase and roundly chastised herself.
Moving about the kitchen, gathering cups from the dresser, tea bags, checking the milk’s sell-by date, she felt utterly discombobulated. She had agreed to meet Ray later. She’d told herself that this wasn’t going to happen, that she would never go behind George’s back. But the night after she’d seen Ray in the park, George had called her ‘old girl’ once too often, punctuat
ing his relentless eulogies about the countryside with this patronizing epithet. It had been in a fit of ‘What the hell?’ that she had texted Ray.
She told herself it wasn’t written in stone. She could back out any time. But her decision to meet him shadowed even the simple task of making tea for her husband. George seemed out of reach, distanced by her betrayal, and as a result she had an instinct to treat him better, more carefully, knowing as she did so that this guilt-induced behaviour was craven and contemptible.
They met at the park at six, in the usual place on the decking by the duck pond. Jeanie realized when she saw him that although she had spent the week persuading herself that she shouldn’t go, in fact there had never been any real doubt that she would.
What about that drink? J she had texted him.
Hurray! When? he had replied.
Nothing had happened yet, she told herself firmly, and nothing would. It was a harmless flirtation. So she fancied a man in the park, so what? She was old and silly and according to her family no longer knew her own mind. But nevertheless, the guilt and the lying had already begun.
‘I’m meeting Rita tomorrow,’ she’d told George.
George had looked up from his crossword, nodded. ‘What are you seeing?’
Jeanie had busied herself loading the dishwasher, rinsing off the cutlery and putting it handle-down in the basket.
‘Not a film, just a girls’ night . . . Lily might be coming too.’
‘How is Lily? Shame she can’t make the party.’ He’d smiled a secret smile, pushing his glasses straight. ‘Not long now,’ he’d added with glee.
Jeanie was barely conscious of her impending birthday. It was the last thing on her mind. In fact the only thing on her mind was the lie she was telling. And Ray. It seemed that both were emblazoned on her forehead in neon lights. But, amazingly, George didn’t seem to notice a thing.
‘Coffee?’ She’d moved towards the cafetière, knowing what her husband’s response would be, since she knew all his responses as if they were her own. A few weeks before she would have considered this knowing a comfort, but now it was an irritation. She’d wished, unfairly, that just for once George would say, ‘No, tell you what, I’ll have a drop of nettle tea today, dear.’
Now, here she was, cold and almost sick with anticipation, being shepherded towards the west gate of the park, which led to the main entrance to Highgate cemetery.
‘Where are we going?’
‘I thought the new Greek at the bottom of the hill.’
Ray seemed as tense as she felt. Gone was the measured calm and the roguish smile, replaced by a shyness she had never seen before.
‘Come back, grandchildren, all is forgiven.’ He gave a short laugh.
‘I think I need a drink.’
‘I know I do.’
They both began to chuckle. ‘This can’t be a good sign, us needing medication to be together,’ she said.
‘It’s just I’ve been building this up in my mind since your text,’ Ray confessed, much to Jeanie’s surprise.
They kept walking, not looking at each other. But hearing what he said, Jeanie took a deep breath and began to relax. Part of her had accepted that she was the silly one, the one with the fantasy, and that despite the obvious overtures, Ray was just going along for the ride. She didn’t mind this, it was what she expected, but now she realized that perhaps he shared her sense of turmoil.
The restaurant was almost empty, except for one young couple by the window drinking beers from the bottle and sharing a plate of meze. Jeanie was relieved. She’d been checking every passer-by since meeting Ray, waiting for one of her many local acquaintances to spot them together and report back, en passant and quite innocently no doubt, to George. The restaurant felt very new, the waiters over-solicitous, the decor too pristine, as if the atmosphere were waiting to arrive. They were shown to a table close to the other couple – Jeanie supposed most people liked the illusion of company when they ate out – but Ray chose one at the far end of the room instead.
‘What do you think?’ He looked around.
‘I don’t really mind . . . it’s fine,’ Jeanie replied honestly.
Now they were sitting opposite each other, the essential bottle of wine ordered, she felt the fluttering, the churning, the out-of-control pounding of her heart begin. She wanted to catch his gaze, to feel again that first shocking intensity, but hardly dared, so she busied herself tidying the cutlery and unfolding the puce paper napkin, placing it carefully in her lap.
‘Cheers.’ They raised their glasses to each other and took an appreciative sip. She hoped the wine might calm her.
‘Tell me, then,’ Ray was saying, ‘tell me everything.’
Jeanie laughed. ‘Everything about what?’
‘You, your life, where you were born and who your best friend was . . . your favourite song . . . do you like carrots . . . just the normal stuff.’
‘How long have you got?’ They were both laughing now, the miraculous connection making it almost irrelevant what they said. It was enough just to be there as the light faded outside and the waiter lit the small table candle, to be allowed to watch each other without censure.
‘Do you really want to know?’
Ray nodded.
‘Born in Norfolk, near Holt, father a Church of England vicar . . . zealous, worthy . . . scary. He might have been happy if he’d thought it was God’s will, but he saw life as grim sacrifice. I’m not sure he even noticed us, he was so totally wrapped up in his calling. Mother a parish worker, had a good heart but was annoyingly neurotic. One brother, two years older, who died when he was fifteen, and sent my mother off the rails. Both parents now dead a long time. Best childhood friend Michelle, who was half Canadian and went to live in Toronto.’ She paused for a moment, wondering what Michelle would think of all this. ‘What were the other things?’ She saw Ray about to speak. ‘No, got it . . . I sort of like carrots . . . or maybe I’m indifferent to them . . . I prefer them raw, and my favourite song is . . . impossible to choose.’
‘What did your brother die of?’
‘Cancer. He’d probably have lived these days, there’s such a good cure rate for children now . . .’ She gabbled on about the wonders of science and the magical advances of chemotherapy to avoid having to address how she really felt about her beloved Will’s death. It was something she had hardly talked about since the morning her father had come into her bedroom and told her he was ‘now with God’. Neither of her parents had been able to help her, and there was no one else she’d felt might care.
‘How horrible,’ Ray was saying.
In her head she still heard Will’s screams. At the end he’d been nursed at home by her mother and a woman from the village, but every time they moved him, day or night, she would listen to his exhausted howl of agony and feel her heart torn from her chest. ‘He’s on the mend,’ her mother would reassure her brightly, and Jeanie went along with it, even as she saw the truth in her mother’s tortured gaze. Because although she knew it was impossible that the yellow, emaciated figure that had once been her brother could ever be well again, she was unable to contemplate the alternative.
‘You must have been devastated,’ he said, and his face told her that he knew what she had gone through.
‘It was a long time ago,’
‘That doesn’t make much difference.’
Jeanie nodded. ‘It does and it doesn’t.’ She felt her throat tighten with decades of unshed tears. Ray’s hand reached for her own, then the waiter arrived to lay the food on the table and they sprang apart like two teenagers caught in the front porch.
‘Sorry, it still catches me unawares sometimes.’ She helped herself to a hot pitta bread automatically, without really wanting it. ‘Your turn now,’ she insisted, swallowing hard. ‘Tell me what happened to your girlfriend, the one you left your wife for.’
Ray looked away. ‘We were together for eleven years . . . and then she died. A massive tumour on the adrenal gland. She
said she felt tired, nothing more than tired, and a bit of what she thought was indigestion. By the time she saw someone they said it was the size of a grapefruit. Anyway, there was nothing they could do, and she died six weeks later.’ He paused, looked at Jeanie with an echo of the original shock still burning in his eyes. ‘It was the tenth anniversary of her death in January.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘She smoked a lot,’ he added, as if he were still trying to find an explanation.
Neither of them spoke for a while as they allowed the ghosts of the past to settle. The food lay almost untouched on the table.
‘So where does your husband think you are?’
‘Girls’ night with my friend Rita and her friend Lily.’
‘Will he ask about it?’
Jeanie shrugged. ‘Depends. If he’s on one of his compulsive benders, we could be discussing the whys and where-fores for ever.’ She shuddered at the prospect, wondering how she had ever dared agree to this meeting with Ray.
There was an awkward silence at the mention of George.
‘Sorry . . . bad subject,’ Ray muttered, offering Jeanie the saucer of hummus.
Jeanie scraped a small amount up with the pitta bread as she spoke. ‘I could make the excuse that I have a dreadful marriage, that my husband is a shit or a bore, or both, that I don’t love him, but . . .’ she looked Ray straight in the eye, ‘but that wouldn’t be true.’
Ray waited.
‘We’ve been happy.’ She paused at the mention of the word, which suddenly seemed inappropriate. Thinking about it, she hadn’t felt really ‘happy’ with her husband for a long time now. Whatever had happened to him all those years ago seemed to have changed his outlook on life. He no longer wanted to socialize, eat out, or go to the theatre or cinema, even when she offered to organize it – that’s why she had taken to going with Rita. ‘It hasn’t been a bad marriage.’
‘You don’t have to convince me. Thirty-odd years of living with anyone is impressive.’