Thursdays in the Park

by Hilary Boyd

  ‘Do you see them much?’

  ‘All dead.’

  ‘Even your brother?’

  Ray nodded. ‘He died two years ago, drink-related liver problems. He was only sixty-one.’ He paused. Jeanie saw the look, knew it well, of a person telling a story they don’t want to get emotional about. ‘I hardly saw him once he left home. He went to sea like my dad for a while, but couldn’t take it and went off the rails; took to the bottle and God knows what else. I didn’t even know where he was for years, then we met up again about five years ago. He saw a piece about the aikido school in the local paper and got in touch. He’d given up the booze and sorted himself out but it was too late, his liver was shot. He was back in Portsmouth again and I used to go down at weekends sometimes and visit. I wish we’d linked up earlier.’

  Jeanie said nothing.

  ‘Families, eh? We’ve said it before.’

  ‘At least you got close to him again.’

  ‘I know. But I can’t help feeling it was a life wasted. Jimmy was always such a live wire, he had such spirit. I’ll never know what went wrong.’

  ‘Perhaps he enjoyed himself along the way.’

  Ray grinned. ‘Oh, I’m sure he did.’

  He finished the last of the wine in his glass. ‘Where to now?’

  Jeanie had stopped thinking; the wine was doing that for her.

  ‘Do you live close?’

  Ray held her gaze. ‘About a hundred yards away.’

  ‘Seriously?’

  ‘When I last looked.’

  They were both taken up in the moment.

  ‘Er . . . you could come back to mine.’

  ‘I could . . .’ Jeanie held her breath.

  ‘You don’t sound sure.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Well, perhaps we should go for a walk on the Heath instead?’

  She laughed. ‘No, Ray, let’s go back to yours.’

  The flat was on the top floor of a thirties-style building on a side street leading up to the Heath. The outside had a rundown air, the paintwork in the lobby scratched and dirty, the lift rickety. But Ray’s flat was light and had an atmosphere of calm, enhanced by the spare, pale-wood furnishing and Japanese prints. She was drawn to the window, which stretched the width of the room, standing for a moment to watch the softening greens of the Heath at dusk. This was the flat, she thought, of a man seeking peace. Ray had taken his shoes off when he came in, and she heard him padding about on the stripped wooden floor behind her, turning on lamps and rummaging for glasses and wine. She reached down to flick her pumps off, loath to turn away from the view, almost as if by doing so she would be irrevocably committing herself to him. When she did turn, he had laid a bottle of red wine and two glasses on the low table by the sofa, and was running his finger along the immaculate rack of CDs.

  ‘Chet Baker?’ he asked.

  Jeanie shook her head. ‘Don’t know him.’

  ‘You’re in for a treat . . . if you like jazz.’

  ‘Try me.’

  Baker’s melancholy trumpet filled the room with its gentle, sexy rhythm, and Jeanie sank back on the sofa and closed her eyes. This place, this man, this music, this moment, all flowed together, gathering her up in a quiet intensity that made her whole being sing with pleasure. She found she was smiling.

  Ray poured her a drink, but she didn’t touch it.

  ‘Are you OK?’ He perched on the sofa next to her.

  ‘Very,’ she replied. She saw him begin to relax, a smile also playing around his mouth.

  For a while they said nothing, just sat side by side listening to the music.

  ‘I’ve wanted to bring you here since the beginning. Just so that we could be alone.’

  Jeanie reached her hand out and he took it.

  ‘Not for nefarious purposes,’ he grinned, ‘but so that we could stop worrying about everyone else.’

  ‘It’s perfect,’ she whispered.

  Desire linked them, an unspoken certainty, but they were in no hurry; the pleasure of touch, of scent, of just being close to each other, was enough.

  ‘Ray . . .’ She wanted to say everything, to explain, to tell him what he’d done to her, how he made her feel, but the words wouldn’t come. She met his gaze and, no longer restrained by the outside world, allowed herself to fall at last into that intense space, a space she had glimpsed but not dared enter till now, where they were completely together. She felt his lips on hers and the desire was finally let loose, coursing through her body until she could barely breathe.

  She had no idea how long they lay there; this was another place, without boundaries or time.

  ‘Jeanie?’ She saw Ray looked troubled, his eyes full of pain.

  She pulled herself up. ‘What is it?’

  Ray gathered her to him, her face tucked in against his shoulder. Still in a daze from their kisses, she waited for him to speak.

  ‘Jeanie, I want you so much, but this is huge for both of us. This isn’t just a . . . just sex, at least not for me.’

  She smiled up at him. ‘Shouldn’t that be my line?’

  Ray’s face cleared; she heard his chuckle rumble inside his chest. ‘OK . . . but I don’t think we should rush into it.’ He looked down at her. ‘It’s . . . well, “huge” is the only word I can think of right now.’

  ‘Have you not . . . had a relationship . . . since Jess?’

  ‘Sex occasionally, nothing more.’ She heard Ray sigh. ‘It scares me, Jeanie.’

  She sat up, reached for her wine. She didn’t understand and was suddenly fearful that he was comparing her with his previous love.

  ‘So what happened to enjoying the moment?’ she teased, and he laughed.

  ‘It’s just I love being with you as it is, even if we are just eating chips or playing with Dylan and Ellie. If we make love . . . well, it takes it to another level.’

  She waited. ‘Are you worried it’ll be no good with me?’ she asked finally, when he didn’t speak. ‘I know I haven’t had much practice this last decade.’

  Ray looked horrified. ‘Christ, no . . . but . . .’ He shrugged hopelessly. ‘I’m not explaining this very well, am I?’

  ‘What, Ray? Please tell me.’ His hesitation was causing echoes of George to spring to mind. Was it her, she wondered; was there something about her that put men off wanting to make love to her?

  Ray got up and began pacing the length of the coffee table and back.

  ‘I suppose what I’m saying is actually very simple.’ He stopped, hands on his hips, and held Jeanie’s gaze. ‘I suppose I’m frightened that I’m falling in love with you, and that if we make love I shall be hooked. And . . . then you’ll go back to your husband.’

  Jeanie couldn’t help smiling. It was from relief as much as anything else. So he did desire her.

  ‘I found these last weeks very hard, when you wouldn’t see me.’ He held his hands up as she began to object. ‘I totally understand why you couldn’t, don’t think I’m blaming you. But nothing’s changed, Jeanie. We’re still where we were three weeks ago.’

  Jeanie realized suddenly that this was not just about her.

  ‘Tell me about Jess,’ she said, and saw the look of pained surprise in Ray’s eyes.

  He sat back down on the sofa and held his hands under his thighs, in a gesture which seemed very childlike.

  ‘It wasn’t Jess herself, so much as losing her,’ he said, looking anxiously towards her as he spoke. ‘Are you sure you want to hear about her?’

  Jeanie nodded.

  ‘I loved her very much. What’s to say? She was young . . . which caused problems sometimes. It was just the average life, I suppose. I had a successful print business with a friend, Mike – mostly stuff, brochures and the like, for the marine companies in Portsmouth. She worked for an IT company in HR – whatever that means.’

  ‘It was called Personnel in our day.’

  ‘Anyway, Jess was good at it. And they worked her to the bone. I thought she was tired because s
he worked so hard. She got sick of me sounding off about her hours. But it wasn’t anything to do with her work, she had bloody cancer all the time. And if I’d just had the nous to get her to a doctor, they might have saved her.’

  Ray talked as if this was now a story, a tale that had an unhappy ending. His delivery was still angry, but there was a quality of rote about it, as if he had repeated the same sentences over and over again. She didn’t know if he had said them to others, or only to himself, but Jeanie knew he didn’t need her to tell him that Jess’s death was not his fault.

  ‘She was so young, Jeanie. Only thirty-two when she died. That’s too soon to die.’

  Jeanie nodded. ‘Too soon indeed.’ She watched his face contort, battered and tanned as if by life, not the weather.

  ‘But I wasn’t really telling you this so you could feel sorry for me. The real point of my story is that I didn’t deal with Jess’s death, with losing her, at all well. In fact, I went to pieces. I began drinking heavily and neglecting the business. Mike put up with it for a while, but then he had to cut me loose, or the whole thing would’ve gone down the pan. And of course, thanks to the money he bought me out with, although it wasn’t much, I could live without working for a while and drink myself into a stupor on a daily basis. God, how I wallowed.’

  ‘It’s understandable.’

  ‘Yes, for a month or two. But this dragged on into years, two to be precise. Sometimes I didn’t go out for days, except to get more whisky. I was probably months short of killing myself from liver damage like Jimmy.’

  Ray reached over to take Jeanie’s hand again. For a moment he played with it, turning it over in his own, stroking the fingers one by one, his mind still lodged in the past.

  ‘So what happened? How did you recover?’

  He chuckled softly. ‘You’re going to think me a crackpot, but I reckon I was saved by the universe.’

  Jeanie raised her eyebrows, ‘Are we talking God here?’

  ‘I prefer to call it the universe. “God” always smacks of organized religion, which doesn’t do it for me, but call it what you like, it was just so fortuitous. I was in the usual mess, drunk from dawn to dusk, unshaven, gaunt, probably looking like one of those street people we avoid at the Archway on a daily basis. One day I had to go to the cash machine. We . . . I lived just behind the dockyard, and I walked along the waterfront in a daze to get to the machine. I didn’t feel so well, so I sat down on a bench next to a man, fit-looking, but very old, like about eighty, who kept staring at me.

  ‘ “What are you staring at?” I asked him, pretty aggressively, but he didn’t seem offended.

  ‘ “I’m staring at a man at the end of his tether,” he replied calmly.

  ‘ “What’s it to you?” I said, or something like that. I was well pissed off at being challenged.

  ‘ “It’s everything to me,” he said, “to see someone so beaten.”

  ‘I suppose it was the first time for an age that I had been spoken to at all, beyond the supermarket checkout girl telling me how much the booze cost, and it brought me up short. I had no one to care, my parents had been dead for years, my brother vanished and probably in much the same state as I was, my friends drifted away.

  ‘ “I am beaten,” I admitted. “But there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”

  ‘ “That’s true,” said the old man, “no one except you.”

  ‘I laughed at that, not a good laugh; even in my dazed state it sounded cruel and cynical.

  ‘ “Right. That’s right. No one but myself, and I don’t give a fuck.”

  ‘The man nodded. “I can see that.”

  ‘ “So don’t give me any lectures about how I’ve got so much to give, how life is so precious.”

  ‘ “I wouldn’t dream of it,” the man said. “But there is one thing I want to tell you.”

  ‘I had convinced myself that I didn’t give a toss about anything at all, but I remember finding myself intrigued as to what he would say. He could see I was interested, and he seemed to measure his words, as if he wanted to be careful to get it right first time. Perhaps he knew there wouldn’t be a second chance.

  ‘ “I have spent my life in pursuit of meaning. Like you, I went through a phase where nothing mattered except pity, for myself, not for others. When I was at rock bottom and close, I believe, to some sort of death, a friend suggested I go with him to the aikido school where he was taking classes. I pooh-poohed this. Martial arts? Me? I could hardly get out of bed. But he insisted, turned up at my house and virtually dragged me. I went because I had to. I was all of a tither, hardly able to stand without support, the tremor in my hands so severe I thought people must notice and judge. But I stayed because I wanted to. Since then it’s been the central plank of my life, both physically and emotionally.”

  ‘He got up, and I remember a sense of panic that he was leaving me.

  ‘ “I would never presume to tell you what to do, nor even suggest it. I am merely telling you what happened to me.”

  ‘And with that he walked off, a tall, proud man, neither stooped nor stiff as his age would have implied. I wanted desperately to talk to him more – I had forgotten how much human contact meant to me – but my stupid pride stopped me from calling him back. The next day, and the day after, for a whole week I went to the same bench and waited for him, but I never saw him again. It was another month before I started checking out the local aikido school, and I half expected to find the old man there. He wasn’t, but it didn’t matter: like him I never looked back.’

  Jeanie could see his eyes misting over as he remembered.

  ‘He saved my life, Jeanie. Sounds like a cliché, but he did.’ Ray smiled, shook himself. ‘That’s what I mean by the universe. When I think back to him now, it feels almost as if he wasn’t real, just a visitation.’

  ‘Maybe it doesn’t matter.’

  ‘But I told you the story for selfish reasons. I’m terrified of loss, of what it might do to me. You . . . that’s why I’m trying to hold back.’ He grinned ruefully. ‘It’s not working, of course, but I am trying.’

  When she looked at her watch it was past three in the morning.

  ‘It’s happened again.’ She began to panic, as if the hour was significant, somehow dangerous.

  ‘You can stay if you like.’

  ‘No . . . no, better not.’ Suddenly she wanted to be on her own, to savour the evening, to have some break from the intensity of him.

  ‘I’ll walk you.’

  They set off into the cold May night, up Swain’s Lane, past the cemetery and on to Highgate Hill.

  ‘We live so close,’ she whispered as they got near. ‘Don’t come any further.’

  Ray laughed. ‘Nosey neighbours?’

  ‘Nosey as hell.’

  ‘If George is away, can we meet tomorrow?’

  ‘I’m in the shop all day. Sundays are busy,’ she told him regretfully.

  ‘And I have to babysit Dylan in the evening.’

  He pulled her into the shadow of the wall beside the church, kissed her softly. She had wanted to be on her own before, but now she clung to him, never wanting to leave the shelter of his arms.

  She slept for only a few hours, and woke early, forgetting for a moment that today there would be no George with a cup of tea, smiling brightly and throwing back the curtains. She seemed to inhabit another world now, a world full of sensuality and indulgence, and to be another person. Instead of the normally practical Jeanie who leapt from her bed each morning at her husband’s bugle call, who never lounged in her dressing gown, nor put off showering or bedmaking, who always had breakfast on the table by eight, she felt strangely centred and whole, as if that other woman were an impostor who had marched around her periphery putting on an act for years. She refused to get up, and snuggled down beneath the soft, warm duvet, still drowning in Ray’s caresses. ‘I’ll have another hour,’ she told herself, quailing at the thought of Saturday mayhem at the shop.

  The next thing sh
e was aware of was the phone buzzing on the bedside table.

  ‘Jeanie?’ It was George.

  ‘Hi . . . hi, how’s it going?’

  ‘Did I wake you? Surely not, it’s gone nine.’ George sounded chirpy and robust.

  ‘No. I was just off to the shop,’ she lied. ‘Sorry, I was deep in thought.’

  ‘OK . . . We had a marvellous day yesterday: the weather’s perfect, a bit windy, but you’d expect that at Gleneagles, and guess what? I won . . . me and Roger won. Isn’t that fantastic? Danny was sick as a parrot, but serves him right. He can’t cheat with this lot, they’ve got his number. I rang you last night, but you didn’t answer.’

  He was obviously waiting for an explanation, and Jeanie searched frantically for a plausible one. She couldn’t use Rita, as she and Bill were in Antigua for two weeks at their timeshare, and George knew this.

  ‘Jola and I went out for a drink after work. We’d had such a tough day and we both needed it.’ This was true, in part at least.

  ‘So what time did you get back? It must have been after eleven when I rang.’

  ‘No idea . . . we didn’t leave the shop till late.’ Jeanie was too tired to worry whether this lie would be sufficient to satisfy her husband. There was a pause at the other end of the line.

  ‘Oh . . . OK. It’s just you normally say if you’re going out.’

  ‘I said, it was a last-minute thing.’

  ‘I’m not getting at you. I was just a bit worried.’

  Jeanie refused to reply to George’s lie.

  ‘Anyway,’ – his tone brightened – ‘we’re off out now. It’s clouded over, but the weather forecast says it’ll hold till tonight, so I hope they’re right.’

  ‘Don’t golfers play in force ten gales?’

  She heard him laugh. ‘They do, all the time. But this one’d rather not. Bye, old girl, have a good day.’

  ‘You too.’

  Perhaps because she wasn’t actually sitting opposite her husband, watching him eating his toast and marmalade and pushing his glasses up his nose, last night seemed far removed, separate from the reality of her marriage. And nothing about the day that followed seemed real either; she existed in a fog of tiredness and euphoria that left no room for guilt.