Dora eyes the bottom of her mug as if she hopes some brandy might lurk there after all.
There’s a long and difficult pause.
‘It sort of feels like a Harold Pinter play,’ Dora says at last. ‘I’m sorry, Kitty mate, but I’m running out of inane and distracting things to say. Shocking, I know.’
I force my mouth to bend into a smile.
‘God, poor old Dora, comes down here to be looked after and ends up saddled with Calamity Kitty.’ I hold out a limp hand to Dora. ‘I’m sorry, mate, I haven’t forgotten that scumbag in your flat, you know. When I’m sorted I’ll go up there and beat him up for you.’
‘Oh, no need!’ Camille says as if she’s suddenly remembered something. ‘Boyfriend went round there yesterday before he had to fly back. Got him out, had the locks changed. Sorted.’ She smiles at Dora. ‘Sorry, I totally forgot, what with all this.’ She gestures broadly and begins to look in her bag again. ‘There’s a set of keys in here …’
‘I love your boyfriend,’ I say with a slight slur. ‘Why did he have to fly back yesterday? Why couldn’t he stay and come down here and change my locks?’
Camille holds out a bunch of keys to Dora.
‘Well, because you don’t need your locks changing and because he flies the plane,’ she says with a smile, although even I can see that her smile hides the fact that she misses him terribly when he’s not here.
‘Is it the absence thing, do you think?’ I ask her out of the blue. She looks at me quizzically. ‘I mean, that makes you so happy after so long. You’ve been going out for longer than some people are married.’ I find that during the course of that sentence I slip off the edge of the armchair and slide seamlessly to the floor. ‘Mentioning no names, of course,’ I finish, wondering if Fergus and I really will be divorced before Ella is one.
‘Well, I suppose the fact that we don’t see other much keeps it fresh, for sure …’ Camille looks a little wary about discussing her relationship, probably because she’s sensitive about upsetting me, but I find that I really want to know how she’s done it.
‘You know, I don’t like to analyse it too much. If I go on about how prefect he is and how much I love him, I’ll tempt fate and, God only knows, I’ve tempted it far more than I should have already. We’ve just been good together. We knew what we wanted from the start and it works,’ she finishes lightly, looking around the room as if casting about for a new subject.
Dora runs a finger around her empty chocolate mug and sucks it clean.
‘Well, we should do something,’ she says, ‘apart from sitting around here getting all maudlin and drunk. We should make a plan of action to get Fergus back for Kitty. Yes, a list of pros and cons, and help her prepare a speech or something …’
Camille gets on to her knees and, taking my hands, pulls me into a sitting position.
‘Yeah, she’s right. Sit up, Kitty, we’re going to sort you out and everything will be all right, every cloud has a silver lining.’ She smiles brightly and I give her a long hard hug.
‘I know, my nan always used to say that,’ I tell her.
I stare at the darkened ceiling for a long time, listening for the sound of my mum’s voice in the corners of the night. If only I could guess what she’d say now, if only I knew her well enough to know how she’d respond, but as hard as I listen there’s nothing there except for shadows.
‘Well, I could have told you that was going to happen,’ Doris says, admiring her hair in my dressing-table mirror.
I roll over, hoping she’ll take the hint and vanish instantly, but instead she just sits beside me on the bed, fixing me with that quizzical, practical stare of hers.
‘How did you ever get to be a sex symbol?’ I ask her cattily. ‘And anyway, if you’d known, I wish you’d warned me or something!’ I grumble. ‘What’s the point of dreaming about musical stars if they don’t give you decent advice. Gene Kelly would’ve.’
Doris presses her shell-pink lips together and tips her head to one side.
‘I’m ignoring that ungracious behaviour because I know you are a little overtired. And anyway, I did give you good advice. You ignored it. If you’d been a little more lady and a little less woman, you wouldn’t be in this predicament. That’s the trouble with you young women of today; you never listen, not even to your heart.’
Something other than my urgent desire to be out of this dream is calling me awake, but the brandy seems to be pressing me ever closer into the mattress.
‘Doris, I’ve got to go,’ I say urgently. ‘Tell me what you’ve come to say, and it better not be that crimping my hair is the answer.’
Doris leans close to me and the scent of Dior washes over me. ‘It seems to me that you never let your love for Fergus be free, it seemed to frighten you. Open up your heart – sing out how much he means to you. Don’t keep your love a secret any more. Oh, and by the way, a wash and a trim wouldn’t go amiss.’ She winks and is gone. As I blink awake, Ella’s cries pull back the bedcovers and compel me to her room before the imagined scent of Dior has fully evaporated.
‘Oh Doris,’ I say as I lift Ella out of her cot. ‘If you insist on showing up, I wish you’d say something at least semi-coherent.’ Ella buries her face miserably into my neck and I begin the ritual of elimination by finding some teething gel and rubbing it into her gums. If it’s not that then it’s wind, or she’s thirsty or she just doesn’t fancy sleeping right now thanks very much. In this one tiny aspect, though, fate seems to favour me for a change, and a few minutes later she is slumbering peacefully against my shoulder. I consider putting her back in her cot and creeping back to my own empty bed, and I consider taking her back to bed with me, but neither option seems to be quite right, so I sink into Fergus’s stupid rocking chair, and as it rocks back under my weight it creaks a greeting.
I pull open Ella’s curtain a chink and look down at the empty road and then up at the black presence of the hills that cancel out the stars along their horizon.
Fergus is just a mile or so away somewhere in that darkness.
I wonder if he’s sleeping?
Chapter Twenty-three
My entire wardrobe is spread over the living room. Ella has made a sort of den in the discarded items as Dora and Camille road-test everything that I have until we find an outfit suitable for going to see your betrayed husband in. Personally I thought all black with a veil would have been a good idea, but Camille found the deep red top that suits me best and isn’t too clingy, whilst Dora picked out some black bootleg trousers, a bit too heavy for the heat that the day promises, but they looked better on my arse than my summer trousers.
‘This is obscene,’ I say, watching Ella throw my discarded clothes over one shoulder only to spin around on her bum and start the process again. ‘This is what you do when you go on a first date, not a last date, and anyway it’s not going to help, is it? The way I look is not really going to make a difference.’
Camille stands in front of me, scrutinising my outfit and frowning unnervingly.
‘You’d be surprised. I read this article about the fact that men can only understand the world visually, and anyway it will help you feel good about yourself, which in turn will give you confidence, which in turn will …’
‘Make you come across as an arrogant and unrepentant cow?’ Dora adds helpfully, wearing one of my bras on her head to the total indifference of an unamused Ella.
‘Help you express your feelings more eloquently,’ Camille finishes, flicking a warning glance at Dora.
‘Or you could just take your clothes off. I find that is usually the best bargaining tool when it comes to men,’ Dora says. ‘That and fellatio.’
‘Oh fabulous, Dora,’ I say, flinging out my arms in despair. ‘So, after all your list-making and speech-writing last night, your plan is that I go and offer my husband a blow job in return for his forgiveness? Brilliant.’
Dora shrugs and exchanges an ‘oooooh, touchy’ glance with Ella, whose head I sincerely hope
this entire conversation has gone over.
‘I’m just saying get your chops round their bits and they don’t usually complain, that’s all.’ Dora looks a little petulant. ‘It’s just that when I read the speech we’d written last night it turned out to be drunken hysterical bollocks, and fellatio is my best Plan B.’
‘It’s your only Plan B,’ I tell her.
‘Okay, but you have to admit it’s a good one.’
Even if there was an alternative route to Castle Kelly I would not choose to take it. I am hoping that as the main body of the town slips away behind me into the valley I will find the secret, the magic words that will make everything all right again.
Gradually the dense network of streets breaks up into detached plots until the countryside stretches out in full view beyond the last buildings, and what few properties there are are so detached that their gardens might as well be referred to as grounds. Castle Kelly is one of these – of course, it isn’t really called Castle Kelly – that is my own plebeian nickname for the largest privately owned house that I have ever been in.
It was designed and built, Daniel told me proudly the first time I trembled on the threshold, by an architect in the 1930s, and its central sleek white tower rises a full four floors above the dense copse of mature trees that surrounds the house. As I approach it, the sound of traffic fades finally into nothing and I wonder how the architect would feel about the Virginia creeper that now covers a large part of that tower, spreading thickly over the window to what was once Fergus’s bedroom. I can just make out through the plant’s mysteriously rippling leaves that his curtains are closed. He must still be sleeping.
For a long time I stand in the porch looking at the deco sunburst cut into the door, waiting for inspiration to come, waiting to know what to say. But nothing comes, except that I realise that the flip-flop sandals Camille has picked for me are biting painfully into the spaces in between my toes. Daniel opens the door and looks at me, his face a picture of perfect neutrality.
‘Are you coming in?’ he says gently. I hesitate for a moment and step over the threshold. ‘He’s up there in his old room.’ Daniel nods at the gently spiralling staircase. ‘He’s been there since he came. Georgina’s seen him, but I haven’t. I went up there last night and stood outside his room, talked through the door, you know? But nothing. You’ve hurt him badly, Kitty.’ He considers me for a moment before saying finally. ‘I don’t think I was wrong about you, I still think you can make him happy, but please, be careful with him, okay?’
I nod anxiously and take the first step on the sweep of the spiral staircase that leads to Fergus until I’m standing outside his bedroom door.
I knock and wait. Nothing.
‘Um, Fergus, it’s me?’ I pause. ‘It’s Kitty. Can I come in?’ I say quietly, almost hoping not to wake him, desperately resisting the urge to run back down the stairs and out of this house, leaving the front door banging in my wake. When he doesn’t reply I try again a little louder.
‘It’s Kitty!’ I call. ‘Please let me come in?’ Nothing comes back at me but I hold my nerve. I’ve come this far, I can’t turn back now. Doris would say that I mustn’t keep my feelings a secret, that I must sing them out. How will Fergus ever know the truth if I don’t tell him. I open the door and look in.
He’s sleeping, wearing his huge 1980s headphones which are plugged into his old record player. I can faintly hear the tinny back-beat of whoever is on the turntable. His black hair is brushed back from his pale forehead, and even stubbled and unkempt as he is he looks about fourteen: sweetly vulnerable in a dangerous and unpredictable world. I go over to the record player and look at the LP crackling as it spins. The Stranglers. I lift the needle and return the arm to its rest, waiting for him to jerk awake or at least to show some sign of life. Instead he just lies there on his back, his arms flung over his head.
‘Fergus, baby,’ I whisper as I sit on the bed beside him. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry.’ I touch the tip of my forefinger to his forehead and trace a line down to the corner of his mouth, holding my breath as he smiles briefly in his sleep. Leaning closer just to be near him, I feel the heat radiate from his body and every moment that I move closer to him passes like a hundred years. I can feel my desire just to be with him vibrating, humming beneath my skin, and unable to resist any longer I kiss him, just touching my lips to his. I don’t expect this new alabaster effigy to respond, somehow, but when he does, his mouth parting just slightly under mine, I kiss him again, more deeply. This time a small moan escapes from the base of my throat as I feel his arms surrounding me, crushing me into him, pulling me close, kissing me back, hard.
He opens his startlingly blue eyes and looks at me. ‘Kitty,’ he says simply before rolling me on to my back and kissing me again, insistently, deeply, his hands already finding my bare skin as he rakes his short nails down my back, kissing and biting gently at my ribs as he pulls my top over my head, pulling the straps of my bra down, ripping the lace away to expose my breasts to his lips and hands. I pull him on to me, pushing myself against the strength of his body, daring to believe that this isn’t a dream. I begin to unbutton my trousers but he pushes my hands away and, taking control, pulls them and my knickers down in one rough movement, working at his own fly at the same time until at last we are both naked, limb to limb, crashing and crushing one another with the weight of emotion around us, and he slides into me, strong and hard. I hear my own gasp as I feel him connecting with me on every level of my being.
Finding his face, we look into each other’s eyes and I hold his gaze as each wave of sensation seems to weave us into an ever-closer embrace until I cry out, taken by surprise by my climax, clinging on to him. Moments later he follows me and crumples exhausted, breathless, in my arms. I feel the excruciatingly brittle edges of pure perfect happiness hard in my chest, and I allow myself to hope.
‘Fergus …’ I try to speak, try to begin, but he closes his fingers over my mouth, looking away from me before saying, ‘Shhhh, don’t say anything, please. Let’s just have this moment. Let’s just have this.’
It’s when he speaks that I realise nothing’s changed, that he hadn’t meant for that to be a reunion.
He meant it to be a goodbye.
For a long time, as we lie in detached silence, I watch the shadow of the creeper outlined against the illuminated orange of Fergus’s boyhood curtains, and I wait for him to break the quiet. We are still, side by side, no longer touching, a thin line of disconnection carefully laid between us. Finally he rolls on to his side and brings himself to look at me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I shouldn’t have done that. I’ve confused us both. I just, I’ve missed you and I wanted to be close to you again. It’s so strange, isn’t it? When you break up with your best friend, the one person you want to talk to about things isn’t there any more.’ He half smiles.
I sit up, drawing my knees up protectively over my breasts.
‘Fergus, don’t make us end like this. We don’t have to end,’ I appeal. ‘Please, I want you to listen to me,’ I say. ‘I’m going to tell you everything. Just listen, please, because if you’re going to let this … this pointless mess split us up, I want you to know exactly why.’
Fergus looks resigned and crosses his arms behind his head. ‘Go on,’ he says.
As I talk, I notice that his eyes stray purposefully from my face and fix instead on the blank, curtain-covered circle of window, its filtered light reflecting on the still, white planes of his face. Watching him as I tell him about that morning, I look for anything in his face that shows he’s still listening or understanding, but there is nothing there except an ever-increasing remoteness and a quiet, coldly burning detachment.
‘Are you listening to me?’ I break my narrative, unable to prevent myself sounding like an irritable wife interrupting the Sunday football.
Fergus’s bright blue eyes lock on to my face.
‘Sorry, did you want me to applaud you or something? Bravo.’
I had thought that the only way to make him understand was to tell the whole truth from the beginning, and that included my decision to go with Gareth that morning instead of getting on a train to London to see him. I’d only succeeded in hurting him all the more.
‘Look,’ I say, reaching for his hand. ‘I know this is hard, but I went with him because … because for every day since I met you someone in the world has known where I am. I’ve been a girlfriend and a wife and a mother. I have never been just me, not for months. It was a stupid, impulsive thing to do, but I wanted to feel free, just for a little while. It wasn’t him that I wanted; it was a little open space?’
He pulls his fingers abruptly out of mine and gestures for me to continue.
‘So we got up there and it was so beautiful and then I told him about Mum …’ I begin.
‘You told him about your mum?’ Fergus interrupts. ‘But you told me that you’ve only spoken about that to people who you trust, who you love. When you told me about that I really believed it meant something between us,’ he says angrily, suddenly sitting up, pulling his shirt on over his head and hunting around the floor for his boxers. Odd how even now, like this, we still feel fine to be naked in front of each other.
‘No, listen. He persuaded me to tell him. He told me that he’d understand. He told me things about himself that made me think he would, he’d …’ I see Fergus staring hard at a Smiths poster on his wall and I trail off realising how it must look to him. When we spent that night together talking about how my mum had been murdered, it was almost like I was giving him a gift, a gift of my trust and my faith in him and our future together. All he can see now is that I gave this to someone I hardly knew, someone who for reasons unknown made me feel free even as he entrapped me.
‘I don’t know why I told him – maybe because I thought he wouldn’t pity me. I was right about that, at least. But I do know why he wanted me to. He wanted me to be vulnerable, emotional. He wanted a reason, an excuse, to touch me, to initiate things.’
After Ever After Page 37