by Emlyn Rees
Archie clambered on to a pew and started to hum. Sam stared at the window, examining the intricate craftsmanship, which showed the thorns around Christ’s head and the nails driven through his hands and feet.
Christ, God, the afterlife, Heaven and Hell: they were concepts which Sam had flirted with as a teenager and at university, but when it had come to the crunch he’d lacked the faith required to believe in any of them. You lived, you died, and that was the end of it. You should seek out happiness and fulfilment while you lived. And you should spread happiness, too, wherever you could. These were the conclusions he’d reached.
But now he was plagued with doubt. How happy should you be? How fulfilled? What if he and Claire were both wasting their lives being semi-happy with each other? He thought again of the young man he’d seen her lunching with in Palma and who he’d later seen leaving their building, the man who he was convinced Claire had had an affair with . . . What if, by settling for one another, Sam and Claire were also denying other people – the other people they could be starting their lives over with – happier existences? What if this chain of mediocre relationships stretched around the whole world and it was up to Sam and Claire to break it?
In the time he’d spent with Laurie in France, she’d taught him so much . . . about art, about history and what it was like to feel young. The world had become a more diverse and interesting place when he’d looked at it through her eyes. Claire, though, partly because of her youth when they’d met, but partly also because she’d always been more interested in her friends’ gossip than the contents of newspapers and books, had never taught him a single thing.
‘What are they?’ Archie enquired.
Sam looked across the chapel to the candlelit table at which Archie was pointing. Then he looked at his son. And what about Archie? he thought. Was staying with Claire for Archie’s sake really the right thing to do? Hadn’t Sam already failed to recommit to his marriage? Wasn’t the resurgence of his emotions for Laurie proof enough of that? Wasn’t it inevitable that his marriage would one day collapse into a cycle of bitterness and recriminations? Was that really the future he wanted to bequeath his son?
A tug at his shirt tail. ‘Daddy, what are –’
‘Candles,’ Sam answered.
‘Ken dolls?’ Archie giggled, confused, wondering whether Sam was making up words or making a joke.
Sam took Archie’s tiny hand, which still fitted snugly inside his own, and led him round to the table on which the prayer candles rested in small glass holders.
‘Good people light them,’ he explained. ‘To remember other people they once loved.’
‘Good people?’
‘Yes.’
Archie pulled free from Sam and ran up to the altar and began tracing out its contours with his fingers.
Good? Evil? Sam wasn’t even sure what the words meant any more. Was he evil to have been thinking what he’d been thinking? Would the right choice for him be the wrong choice for everyone else? He didn’t know. All he did know was that he was miserable, miserable with Claire, and miserable without Laurie.
The French windows were open in the sitting room when Sam and Archie arrived back at the penthouse. Through the billowing electric blue curtains, Sam caught glimpses of Claire sitting on the spacious balcony outside. She was on the telephone, chattering, laughing.
Archie must have seen her, too, but when Sam put him down he ran not to her, but across the tiled sitting room and into the kitchen doorway, to where Isabel was standing with her arms outstretched. Archie squealed with delight as she scooped him up into the air.
‘I saw Ken dolls! I saw Ken dolls!’ he began to explain excitedly as Isabel carried him through with her into the kitchen.
As Sam walked out on to the balcony, he remembered the series of sun-drenched landscapes which Laurie had shown him in France. He’d give anything to see what she was working on now. He thought of her there, painting in the boathouse on the beach. Warmth, that’s what he craved. Not sterility. Warmth, vitality, creativity, that’s what had drawn him to her from the start.
Claire bought, Laurie did. That was the defining difference which Sam now saw between them. Claire was a consumer of art, Laurie a creator. Laurie gave to the world and Claire took.
All Claire’s talk of setting up an interior design business . . . he saw it now for what it was: a creative screen behind which she concealed an otherwise indolent life, conversational fodder for dinner parties, an excuse to shop . . .
‘Oh, there you are, Sam,’ Claire said, flashing him a brief, perfunctory smile. She’d finished on the phone. ‘I was beginning to think you weren’t coming back. Nice trip? Archie happy?’
She might as well have been ticking items off a shopping list. He nodded his head in reply.
She was wearing a black G-string, but apart from that and her Diesel sunglasses she was naked. Suntan oil glistened on her shoulders and her hair was slick with conditioner and combed back from her face. Her smiley face tattoo grinned at him from her ankle. She could have been a model, Sam thought, stretched out on one of the poster hoardings above the road into Palma. Everything about her physique was perfect. And yet she left him cold.
‘Here,’ she said, ‘have a taste.’ She held a cigarette, half smoked, in one hand and a tall glass in the other. Carbonated bubbles spiralled up through a mixture of clear liquid, crushed ice and mint leaves.
‘No thanks,’ he answered. He stared briefly out at the white sails of yachts cutting across the bay, before turning round to face her and leaning back against the balustrade.
‘I thought we could serve up cocktails,’ she said.
‘When?’
‘As soon as they arrive.’
‘Who?’ He noticed her red leather diary on the table next to her, sandwiched between her pack of Marlboros and her phone.
‘Sean and Iris. Greta and Sabina. And the gang from the club.’ She read something in his face. ‘Oh, Sam,’ she groaned. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve forgotten.’
‘How can I forget people I’ve never even met?’ he replied tersely.
‘No, not them, the party.’
‘What party?’
‘The party we’re having today. I emailed you twice about it,’ she remonstrated. ‘Twice, because I knew you’d forget.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’
‘Because I’ve been busy.’
‘Doing what?’ The question came out more harshly than he’d intended.
‘Organising the party, of course. These things don’t just happen, you know. There’s the food to decide on, and the drinks, and the guest list. I’ve asked Paula as well, by the way . . . And Antonia and Xevi, who run the new health spa over at Soller,’ she went on, stubbing out one cigarette and lighting another. ‘It was you who gave me the idea to invite them actually, when you said . . .’
But Sam was no longer listening. When was he last truly happy? That’s what he was asking himself as she continued to speak. Completely happy, not partially, not just in his business life, or alone with Archie, but in his life as a whole? When he was with Laurie on Flight. And the time before that? When he was with her in France. When he’d decided to leave Claire. Before he’d been told about Archie . . .
‘. . . and Alain Tricard, who I thought you might be interested in talking to, because he’s no longer working at Zones and I know you’ve been looking for a chef for . . .’
Everything Sam had built since he’d broken off with Laurie had been built on a lie, the lie he’d started telling himself three years ago: that he no longer cared for her. But all he’d really done was bury his feelings for her. They’d lain there dormant, like foundations, underpinning everything he’d become. But now the cracks were starting to appear. The longer he left it, he knew, the more likely it became that the whole structure of his life would collapse like rubble around him.
‘. . . which is forty people in total, and I know it’ll be a bit a squeeze, but . . .’
What was
he to do? He didn’t know. He knew what he wanted to do, but that wasn’t the same thing. He wanted to go to Laurie and . . . and see what happened next . . . he wanted to run from here as fast as he could . . .
Claire raised her sunglasses up on to her brow and peered at him curiously. ‘Are you OK?’
‘No,’ he said.
‘You’re looking stressed again.’ She said it like he might have done it on purpose.
‘No, I –’
‘Only I had lunch with Kayla last week and you know how down she was feeling last year after she broke up with Andy? Well, her doctor recommended a psychiatrist. And I know that might sound a little extreme, but really it’s not these days. All kinds of people –’
Sam held up his hand.
‘Oh, God,’ she said with a look of sudden dismay, ‘you don’t mind me mentioning it to her, do you? Only I thought –’
‘No,’ Sam interrupted, ‘I don’t mind. But no, I’m not feeling stressed, either.’ He meant it; his panic attacks had ceased after he’d spoken to Laurie that night in the Angel’s wheelhouse, as if by acknowledging her and what had once been between them, he’d released the valve on all that pressure which had been building up inside.
Claire took a drag on her cigarette. ‘What then?’
‘I can’t make the party.’ His answer had come without thinking about it. The excuse came just as quickly: ‘I’ve got a meeting.’
He marvelled at how easy it was to slip into the pattern of lying, just like it had been when he’d first met Laurie and had spoken to Claire on the phone to tell her he’d need to stay in France for longer than he’d initially thought.
Claire’s phone started to trill now and vibrate across the table. ‘But it’s Sunday,’ she protested, ignoring it.
‘I know.’
‘Well, can’t it wait? Can’t you just cancel it? Please?’ she implored.
‘No.’
‘Well, what time can you get back by?’ she demanded.
‘I don’t know.’
And he didn’t. Truly, he had no idea.
The phone tipped off the table and clattered on to the tiles. The trilling stopped.
Claire growled. Another drag on her cigarette, then another. ‘That is so fucking typical of you,’ she then exploded, jumping up. ‘You’re my husband. What’s everyone going to think of me, hosting a party on my own?’
Her aggression only succeeded in doubling his determination. ‘It can’t be helped.’
‘Well, fuck you, Sam,’ she said, waving her hand at him like she was shooing away a wasp. ‘Fuck you. That really is too fucking bad.’
‘Hello?’
It wasn’t Sam or Claire who’d spoken.
‘Hello?’ the thin voice sounded again.
Simultaneously, they stared down at the dropped phone from which they both now realised the voice was coming.
‘Hello?’ it said. ‘Claire, is that you?’
Scowling at Sam, Claire picked up the phone and checked the display for the caller’s name. ‘Leonie, darling,’ she cooed, turning her back on Sam, ‘I knew you were there all along. Did you like our little joke? Us pretending to fight like that?’
Sam reached Sa Costa in under an hour and parked the Porsche four-by-four by the front door. In spite of the air conditioning, he could feel himself burning up. He jerked his tie from round his neck and threw it on top of his suit jacket which lay draped and crumpled across the passenger seat.
Look at it all, he thought: the Porsche, the black leather attaché case in the footwell, the Jermyn Street tailored suit and Cartier tie, which he’d changed into back at the apartment to make his exit more convincing. Here it was: his fantasy future: the slick, savvy executive lifestyle he’d dreamt up for himself when he’d first left London and moved out here. But what was it really? Laughable, that’s what. All of it. Smokescreen. What had it ever done but disguise the extent of his misery? Glamour . . . power . . . success . . . without happiness, none of it meant a thing.
And yet he knew this was insane, being here now. He was insane. This wasn’t a rational move. He didn’t have enough information to base a decision on. The course of action he was embarking on – had already embarked upon – he didn’t even know where it would lead.
He had to see Laurie, that was all he knew for sure. Seeing her would decide everything. And anyway, what could possibly be worse than what he’d just left behind?
Leaving the keys in the ignition, he got out of the car. Leaving the door wide open, he marched up to the front door. He rattled the handle, but it was locked. He rang the bell. He wondered who’d answer. Laurie? Or him. James Cadogan. Her boyfriend. Would he still be here? Maybe down by the swimming pool with her now, performing butterfly dives from the board as she applauded and marked him out of ten? Or upstairs in the bedroom, tangled up among the sheets with her, or grappling for purchase in the shower, lips pressed up against each other’s scented skin?
Jealousy coursed through Sam, the same as it had done the moment he’d laid eyes on the other man, the instant he’d realised that they were together. It hadn’t even occurred to him that there’d be someone else. But now he couldn’t believe his own arrogance. What? Did he really think that just because Laurie was working out here she had no one else waiting for her at home? Just because Sam had failed to move on from her didn’t mean she had from him.
But he wouldn’t let James’s existence put him off. In the same way he didn’t know how serious the two of them were, he didn’t know how serious they weren’t. Because Laurie hadn’t mentioned James to him, had she? She’d coloured in so much of her life when they’d last talked, yet left that part of the canvas blank. Which could mean one of two things: either James was so important to her that she wanted him kept separate from Sam, or he wasn’t even important enough to warrant a mention.
Again, Sam rang the bell: still no answer. He ran to the side of the house and down the pine-needle-matted steps to the lower terrace. The pool was unoccupied, its surface as flat as a drum skin A sprinkler hissed across the lawn, firing rainbows into the air. Dante was standing on a rickety ladder, pollarding the cherry tree which stood on the far side of the pool. Hearing Sam’s footsteps, he turned and waved and smiled.
Sam hurried over and shook his hand before quizzing him in rapid Spanish. Laurie was down at the boathouse, he told Sam. And James? The Englishman? He’d flown home yesterday.
Sam set off quickly towards the beach. James had gone. Hope, then . . . Sam still had hope to cling to. But more doubts dug in. Just because James had gone, didn’t mean he was forgotten. And even if he was . . . friendship, that might be all Laurie wanted from Sam. At best. At worst, she’d already got what she’d needed: closure on the past.
Lizards scattered before him as he continued his descent along the uneven path. Seabirds cried mournfully in the sky above. The sea flashed blue through the brushwood and then, as he rounded the bend in the path, he saw the sandy beach stretching out along the cove.
There, at the end, nestling against an outcrop of rock, was the boathouse. Sam ran across the baking sand, his legs growing heavier with each step, like he was being dragged down into a swamp. But he wasn’t going to stop. Stop now and he knew he’d turn back.
He flung the door open. She was standing on the other side of the wooden rowing boat, dressed in scruffy denim shorts and an old grey T-shirt. She turned to face him, startled, her paintbrush in her hand. Her red hair was tied up in a knot, stabbed through with a pencil that held it in place. Her legs were spattered with paint: greys and blacks and blues. She was a mess. She looked more beautiful than anyone he’d ever seen.
Behind her was the painting she’d been working on, a great grey canvas of leaden Atlantic waves. A painting from the mind, then, with a sky choked by rain, so different from the view outside. A corked bottleneck glinted on the crest of one of the oil-ridged waves.
‘Sam . . . You scared the life out of me.’
Whatever beauty the painting possesse
d, it had nothing on her. Seeing her was like disturbing a creature in its natural habitat. Her cheeks shifted from white, to pink, to red. It was intimate, personal, a reaction to his presence, as if he’d reached out and touched her skin with his fingertips.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
Did he love her? he asked himself. Yes. He’d accepted that now. He’d stopped trying to fight it, like he had done at the party on the Angel, like he had done during dinner at Sa Costa, like he’d been fighting it every day since he’d made his decision to return to Claire.
Was it real love? That didn’t mean a thing. There were a million kinds of love for a million kinds of people. There was the love he felt for Archie, for Rachel, for his parents and, yes, for Claire, as well. All were real, all were different.
The love he felt for Laurie was impulsive, like the start of a smile, or the desire to be held. It had nothing to do with duty, responsibility or pride. It was a dancer, shimmering tantalisingly before him, beckoning him to join in. It was an explosion of life and possibility, a promise of hope. It was natural, instinctive and pure.
‘What do you want?’ she asked.
He strode towards her and stared into her eyes. He could smell the paint on her clothes and feel the heat of the air all around. He was intoxicated.
‘You,’ he said and, leaning forward, he kissed her.
Chapter XVI
Stepmouth, July 1953
Bill breathed deeply as he worked, enjoying the blood pumping through his muscles. He twisted the gardening fork’s prongs through the sodden peaty earth. It was tough, back-breaking work, and the near-black mud clung to his boots like wet cement. But he shouldn’t complain, he supposed. It was good to be outside after so many days stuck indoors watching the rain trail down the barred windowpanes at home.