by Claire Dyer
‘Yes. Thank you. The room’s great. And thank you for having us to stay. Boyd calls you his god-send.’
The girl’s laughter is, I think crossly, like a gentle waterfall with the sun beading through it. Fuck it, I say to myself. Fuck it. I don’t want to like her. I don’t need to like her. It’s not in the plan.
‘Humph.’ The noise comes out like the noise dogs make when they’re dreaming. ‘It’s not like I had a choice,’ I say curtly.
‘Even so,’ and there’s that laughter again, ‘it’s kind of you. No, not kind. It’s actually really amazing. I don’t think I could do it.’ As she says this, Honey reaches out a hand and touches me on the arm. Instinctively I recoil.
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ Honey says. ‘I didn’t mean to …’
‘Boyd’s making something to eat,’ I say instead. ‘Tell him I’ll be down in a bit, will you?’
And with that I brush past Honey and stride along the landing to the bathroom. Once there I shut the door behind me and rest my head against it. The sun is still beating through the window.
‘Fuck,’ I say out loud. ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck.’
And there they are, their toothbrushes in a glass on the shelf: one green, one pink. They are nestled up against one another. Mine is in its own glass on the window sill where it always is, where it had been when Boyd’s toothbrush had been nestled up against it.
I hadn’t minded Honey touching me. In actual fact, I’d quite liked it. It was the kind of touch I imagine a child giving a parent; possessive, careless, full of a nameless love. The kind of touch I’d once believed would be mine for always.
Boyd
‘Well, that didn’t go too badly, I thought,’ Boyd says to Honey as he pulls back the duvet and gets into the bed.
He says it quietly, afraid that Vita will hear him, and he’s lying of course. The evening had been terrible.
But then he whispers, ‘What the fuck is that?’
Honey’s wearing some sort of Victorian nightgown buttoned up to her chin. When they’d lived in the flat, she’d slept naked.
‘I thought I ought to, you know,’ she says. ‘Just in case I bump into her in the corridor during the night.’
‘But it’s ridiculous! You look sixteen in it.’
‘I quite like it,’ she says, climbing in beside him.
Her eyes are enormous in the low light from the bedside lamp. Outside the night sky is navy. When he’d drawn the curtains to, the moon had been high and small, as small and bright as a pearl. ‘Aw, take it off. It’s hideous.’ He laughs and, leaning over her, runs his hand up inside the thick material until he finds the top of her thigh.
‘We can’t,’ she murmurs. ‘We shouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’ His fingers are pushing her legs apart. Her mouth is half open, he knows this look. She wants it too.
‘She might hear us. It wouldn’t be seemly.’
‘Seemly? Ye gods woman, are you speaking like you’re from the nineteenth century now too?’
‘But I’m right, aren’t I?’
She clamps her legs together trapping his hand. Next she pulls his face down to hers and kisses him softly on the lips.
‘Boyd?’
He loves it when she says his name. ‘OK. You win,’ he says, reluctantly withdrawing his hand and smoothing her nightgown down again. He kisses her forehead. ‘But promise me that we will, and soon? OK? And promise me you’ll get rid of this thing?’ Again, he tugs at the nightgown. ‘Or I might be forced to rip it off you!’
He’s joking of course.
‘Perhaps you should get some britches and one of those flouncy Darcy shirts …’
‘You’re mixing your fashion eras!’
‘OK, Mr Know-It-All. Anyway, you were saying, you thought it went OK tonight? Dinner and all that? Did I do all right?’
‘You were fine. It’s gonna be fine here. Trust me.’
‘What time you setting the alarm for?’
She tucks her hands under her chin in her customary adorable way. She has absolutely no idea how gorgeous she is, Boyd thinks as Honey asks him this.
‘Seven should do it. We’ve got that valuation in Morris Road to do first thing.’
‘I think I drank a bit too much,’ she says drowsily.
‘It’s never easy, the first night in a new place but I see you’ve already chosen which side you’ll be sleeping on.’
‘You know me. Always a door to my left and able to see a window. I’m kind of superstitious that way.’
‘Are you? I hadn’t noticed,’ Boyd nudges her gently with his arm.
‘And apparently there’s a film star who always has to sleep with his head pointing north. Or maybe it’s a poet, or a writer, or an explorer. I’m not sure.’ She sighs sleepily.
Boyd smiles to himself. She’d told him exactly the same thing the first night she slept in his bed at the flat.
‘Is there?’ he says.
‘But it’s not new to you, is it?’ she asks after a brief pause.
‘What isn’t?’
‘Sleeping here. It’s not your first night here. You’ve lived here before.’
‘Never in this room though. In the front bedroom and on the sofa, yes, but not in here,’ he says, leaning down and kissing her lightly on the lips. ‘Night, Honey.’
‘Night, Boyd.’
He turns off the light. There is a strip of yellow from the landing light at the bottom of the door. He can sense, but can’t hear, Vita in her room on the other side of the staircase. He thought them being here wouldn’t matter, but it’s odd, it does feel odd. He hadn’t expected it to.
He forces his mind to concentrate on what’s outside the house, rather than what’s inside it: he thinks about the park, the trees keeping guard, the grass silver in the spotlight moon. He imagines urban foxes following their night-time trails, or a badger walking across the playing field, rocking its body from side to side. Listening carefully, he waits for the nightlife to make its sounds: the purr of an owl calling, hedgehogs rustling through leaves. But there’s nothing. Just the distant hum of traffic, Honey’s gentle breathing.
Dinner had been bread, thick-cut ham, cheese, chutney, beefsteak tomatoes and too much wine. The three of them had sat around the small wooden table on the patio outside the back door and he’d tried very hard not to focus on what had changed since he’d left. The table itself was new, as were the chairs they were sitting on. Vita had obviously taken to growing herbs too, there were pots of them dotted around the patio’s edge and she’d hung a basket crammed with red begonias on the back wall of the house. The garden had become much more overgrown. He could hardly see her studio now. He remembered building it and thought – maybe unfairly – how, whilst he’d moved on, she’d chosen not to.
He turns over in bed to face the door. Honey’s back and shoulders are rising and falling in time with her breathing. She always seems so childlike when she sleeps and doesn’t dream, he thinks, the wariness she carries with her seems to fade then.
Has he really moved on though? After all, he’s back here now, isn’t he? He studies Honey’s neck, how it tapers, how her hair line tapers too. He cracks his knuckles and closes his eyes. It’s only temporary, he tells himself and it’s not as if he has anywhere else to go.
He sees the three of them as they were at dinner, as a tableau printed on the back of his eyelids. He’d tried to keep the conversation flowing. ‘Apparently, Farnham Road Hospital in Guildford was opened in 1866 in memory of Prince Albert. Queen Victoria was a patron, donating one hundred guineas to the cost of building it. I’ve often wondered if there’s a link somewhere between that and why this terrace is named after him. Do you think he visited Farnham at some point, or maybe passed through it on a royal progress or whatever it’s called? We never bothered to find out, did we Vita?’
Vita was playing with the stem of her wineglass.
‘No, Boyd. We never bothered,’ she said. Then she turned to Honey and, in a voice much sharper than Boyd reckoned she
’d intended, asked, ‘Are you a monarchist?’
‘Never really thought about it,’ Honey said, swallowing hard. She put down the piece of bread she was holding and dropped her hands on her lap so that they couldn’t be seen. Boyd recognised this move. She did it when she was worried or nervous or felt herself under scrutiny because, when she is, her hands shake.
‘No, I suppose someone your age wouldn’t really need to worry about stuff like that,’ Vita said pointedly.
And then bless her, Honey bit back. ‘Well, are you a monarchist or a republican then, Vita? You’ve obviously had a lot more experience than me, so no doubt you have a point of view.’
She said it charmingly, her lips twitching with a half-smile, but she still had her hands in her lap.
Vita’s shoulders relaxed a bit and she looked at Honey with a hint of respect. Fifteen all, Boyd said to himself, cutting a corner off the piece of cheddar and popping it into his mouth.
‘I guess if I thought the way my parents claim they do, I’d have the Royals’ heads on spikes,’ Vita said, ‘but, realistically, I think they do a good job. They’re obviously a bit pompous and detached from the real world of mortgages and benefits and two-for-ones at Aldi, but they represent something that means well, that does the country good.’
Vita looked almost surprised at herself for having said so much. If Boyd had imagined how tonight would be, he’d have thought, knowing Vita as he does, that she’d keep her own counsel, play it cool, but here she was almost having a conversation with Honey.
‘More wine?’ Boyd asked.
‘OK,’ Vita said.
‘Yes please,’ Honey replied.
At that moment a man came out of the back door of the neighbouring house. He looked over the fence at them. Boyd realised then that Vita had never replaced the fence like they’d planned to do once upon a time; it was still low and tatty, threaded through with the clematis he’d planted the year before he left. The clematis obviously hadn’t been cut back properly for a while.
The man raised a hand in greeting.
‘Hi there,’ he said jovially.
Vita shifted in her chair, picked up her glass and took a gulp of wine.
The man was, Boyd noticed, small and neat, wearing a faded denim shirt and pale chinos. His skin was the colour of cappuccino and he sported a tidy beard, the same dark brown as his short hair. He had kind eyes and a frank, open smile. He must, Boyd reckoned, be about forty.
‘I’m Colin. Next-door neighbour, for my sins!’
He didn’t seem surprised to find Boyd and Honey there which made Boyd wonder what Vita had told him about them. Boyd stood up and went to shake Colin’s hand. It was compact, warm and dry and, not for the first time, Boyd had to remind himself not to squeeze too tight; it is easy to forget sometimes with hands the size of his.
‘I’m Boyd and this is Honey,’ Boyd said, pointing at Honey who smiled at Colin.
‘Yes, Vita said you’d be coming to stay. It’s nice to meet you.’
‘Likewise.’
It was all so perfectly reasonable and grown-up and Boyd was on the cusp of asking how long ago he’d moved in when Colin said, ‘Better leave you to it. Just giving my tomato plants a quick water and then I’m off out. No doubt we’ll bump into one another again sometime.’
‘No doubt,’ Boyd said, moving back towards the table and sitting down again. Honey was still smiling at the new neighbour but, Boyd noticed, Vita hadn’t said a word throughout the exchange. ‘He seems nice,’ he said, as Colin made his way down his garden, carrying a watering can.
‘Mmmm,’ Vita replied and then she added, ‘Well, I’d better get this lot cleared away,’ and she pushed back her chair and stood up, taking some of the empty plates with her into the house.
It was nicer when she’d gone inside. The atmosphere in the garden softened. Boyd could hear Colin whistling something tuneless as he pottered amongst his plants; the sky had turned a kind of translucent lilac. Birds were shouting from the trees.
‘You OK?’ he asked, reaching under the table for Honey’s knee and giving it a squeeze.
She nodded. ‘Not sure who won that round,’ she said.
‘It doesn’t need to be like that,’ he said. ‘It shouldn’t be like that. Vita is …’
But just at that moment Boyd didn’t know how to describe the woman who had been and was still, technically, his wife. Vita was just Vita: sharp-edged, vivid, angry and disappointed and, although he didn’t want to, Boyd had to admit that some of this was down to him. She hadn’t always been this way. There’d been a time when …
Honey makes a small sound in her sleep which rouses Boyd from his musings. He inches closer to her, feels the heat from her body and he reaches out to rest his hand on her leg. All is still quiet in Vita’s room. Outside the night is still turning and somewhere in the sky there will be a shooting star, he thinks. Eventually he sleeps.
* * *
When his alarm goes off in the morning, it takes Boyd a few seconds to remember where he is. Yesterday he’d woken up in his flat to its usual light and the shapes made by his furniture. It’s different here. He tracks back in his memory to see if he recognises it from before, when he used to live here, but he can’t. The house is the same; its fittings and decor may have changed a bit but the house is fundamentally the same, so maybe it’s him who’s changed. He is a different person now.
Next to him Honey stirs.
‘Morning, sleepyhead,’ he says.
‘Piss off.’ She burrows deeper in the duvet.
He kisses her shoulder through the inconvenient cotton of her nightgown.
‘Piss off,’ she says again. She’s always a nightmare first thing.
‘I’ll go and get you a coffee, shall I? And use the bathroom. That way at least I’ll be out of Vita’s way.’
Honey snuffles in agreement, at least he takes it to be agreement.
He hadn’t thought through how it would be: the three of them negotiating one another’s morning routines. It had all been so simple in the past. Vita would rise at six-thirty, drink two mugs of tea sitting in the alcove at the back of the kitchen, a newspaper on her knee open at the crossword, a pen behind her ear. Then she’d shower and dress and eat one piece of thickly buttered toast thickly covered with Rose’s Lime Marmalade before either going down the path to her studio or down the path to get her bicycle and go off to see a client, or a gallery owner, or a picture framer. And he’d get up, get dressed and go out the front door. He’d drive to the office where Trixie would make him his first coffee of the day.
Back then it had been as though he and Vita were at either end of a piece of elastic and, come the evening, they’d be pulled back toward one another again, back toward the house, to an evening by the fire or sitting in the garden. And it had all worked splendidly for a while.
He wanders downstairs and there she is, sitting on the sofa in the alcove, a newspaper on her lap, a pen behind her ear, a cup of tea on the table in front of her. She’s wrapped in an orange pashmina under which she’s wearing a pair of striped, men’s pyjamas. Her hair is in its customary plait.
‘Oh,’ Vita says, looking up at him. ‘I’d forgotten you were here.’
‘Really? Who did you think it was coming down the stairs?’
‘I mean, I’d forgotten you were both here. For a moment …’ She takes a gulp of her tea. ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter.’
Her voice is angry and she plucks the pen out from behind her ear and writes something in one of the boxes in the crossword. ‘Nine down,’ she says. ‘Oblivion. The answer’s Lethe, of course. It’s been staring me in the face for the last ten minutes. Sodding thing.’ She slaps the paper down and stands up. ‘OK if I use the bathroom? It’s time for my shower.’
‘Sure’, he answers. ‘We’ll fit in around you. That’s the deal.’
She makes a kind of harrumphing noise as she puts her mug in the sink and gathers her pashmina around her shoulders more tightly. ‘I shouldn’t be long,’ s
he says. ‘And, by the way …’
‘Yes?’ He’s putting the kettle on. She’s standing just behind him. He can feel an untamed energy buzzing through her.
‘… put some clothes on before you come down tomorrow morning OK?’
Boyd looks down. ‘Shit,’ he says. ‘Sorry.’
He’s wearing nothing but his boxers. It may have been appropriate yesterday morning in his own flat. It may have been appropriate six years ago when he was still living here. But now, this morning? No, it wasn’t appropriate at all.
The kettle is making a noise as it comes up to the boil, but he’s convinced he can hear Vita talking to herself as she climbs the stairs.
Half an hour later, when Vita has had her toast and marmalade and has slammed the back door and gone down the path to her studio, Honey is sitting up in bed holding a cup of coffee and Boyd is putting on a tie in front of the dressing table mirror.
‘Shall I drop you at the office on the way to Morris Road?’ he asks her.
‘Sure, but if you drop me at the front, then I’ll have to leave by the front door this evening. You know that. I can’t mix and match my doors.’
‘I know,’ he says, watching her reflection in the mirror, her eyes huge and dark in the room’s half-light, her neck so slender it’s amazing it can hold the weight of her head. ‘You getting up soon or what?’ he asks her. ‘You have ten minutes and then I’m leaving without you.’
‘You wouldn’t.’ She’s laughing at him and she’s right. He wouldn’t.
‘Let me just check my horoscope and then I’ll get up, I promise,’ she says, putting her coffee down and picking up her phone. ‘I’ll check yours and Vita’s at the same time.’
‘Mumbo jumbo if you ask me.’
‘But I’m not asking you, am I?’ She’s smiling as she scrolls down on her phone. ‘Mmmm,’ she says, ‘looks like someone is going to contact me from afar today. I sincerely hope not!’ She says this almost crossly, defiantly but, he notices, she doesn’t check his and Vita’s. She puts the phone back down and gets out of bed.
And then it comes to him. He knows what gift he can get her for her birthday next month.