by Simon Mawer
I went up by train on Friday evening. I was, I thought, looking pretty good: that shirt my mother had sent for my birthday, my hair as long as they would allow it at school and brushed forward something like the Beatles did it, my trousers flared, my boots elastic-sided. “Chelsea boots” was what they were called. Sitting there among the rush-hour crowd on the Circle Line, I felt part of the city. There were mods, there was a greaser or two (you tried not to make eye contact), there were dolly birds in short skirts and long eyelashes, there was scandal and outrage and the caustic laughter of the young and the silent shock of the adults. I got off the Tube at Sloane Square and walked along King’s Road, where the shops looked good, the crowds looked good, where life itself looked pretty good on that Friday evening with the weekend stretching ahead.
I pulled out the map and checked the street. A couple of turns and there it was, a small backwater of quiet with a narrow house shouldered in between others in one of those mews, all bright white paint and bay windows and geraniums on the window ledges. Backwater Mews, Chelsea. A van was delivering a chest of drawers a few doors down. Cats sat and watched. I checked Caroline’s letter just to make sure of the number and found the name beside the doorbell: Matthewson. I pressed the button and listened.
While I waited a car drove into the mews and a couple got out, talking in brassy voices and laughing at something. Were they laughing at me? It was a cold evening, but I felt hot, all the heat of adolescence. Then a voice spoke, a small electronic imitation of Caroline’s trapped behind the aluminum grille of the intercom: “Is that you, Robert? Come on in.”
The door clicked open onto shadows. Caroline was standing in a doorway leading off the narrow hall. She was the same as when I had last seen her that summer. Why had I expected her to be different? She was the same: same hairstyle, the same kind of denim shirt. She was wearing a skirt now. Denim, like the shirt, just above the knee. Gray stockings. Looking younger than I thought she ought to be. But that was the same as well.
“Robert,” she said. Almost an exclamation of surprise. “You must be tired. Did you have a good journey? You found the house all right? Rather different from Gilead, isn’t it? You know I can’t make up my mind which I prefer? When I’m there I prefer here, and when I’m here I prefer there.”
The place had fitted carpets, a luxury we didn’t have at home. There was a poster framed on the wall — an abstract painting, a thing of swaths and swirls of color and the name Kandinsky and the date of an exhibition. The Museum of Modern Art in New York. I’d never seen anything like that before, an advertisement framed.
I looked for Jamie.
“Just put your things down anywhere. We can deal with them later. You’ll have a drink? A glass of wine? I’ve got beer if you want it. Wine’s all right?”
I hadn’t said a word. I’d just followed her through the door and into the kitchen and stood there watching her open the bottle that she had taken from the fridge, and I hadn’t said a word. The cork came out with a decisive pop, as of things going off. Fireworks. “It’s Californian,” she told me. “You can’t get it easily in London, but it’s really rather good. We always used to drink it in the States. Chardonnay There’s a wine merchant in the Old Brompton Road who specializes in that sort of thing. Now where are the glasses?”
The glasses were already out, two of them ready and waiting on the marble top, two large, long-stemmed, ellipsoid wineglasses, twice as large as any I had ever seen. Only two of them. I could count. The wine was yellow, the color of piss.
“I’m awfully sorry about the mess up,” she said as she held a glass out for me.
I could count. I could count the glasses; I could sense the atmosphere. I wasn’t a fool. “Mess up?”
“Jamie’s not being here.”
“Not here?”
“Yes. Or rather, no. I told you when you rang, didn’t I? I’m really cross. He rang up to say he couldn’t come. Something about a group going to the Lake District for the weekend. I wish…” She looked at me with a tired smile. What did she wish? “This climbing. Maybe it’s in the blood, his father and everything. But that doesn’t make it any easier, does it? Didn’t he go climbing with you once? In a quarry somewhere?”
What had he told her? I felt a moment of panic, the sudden, ridiculous thought that my past was about to catch up with me, that she would ask me about what had happened and that I would be constrained to tell her what we had never told anybody, about the guard and all that. That moment was, perhaps, the last glimmer of childhood guilt — before adult guilt took over. “It was just playing around,” I said.
“That’s just what he says, and what his father used to say too. A game. A bloody silly game where people get killed.” There was a silence. She made a wry face, a pout of disappointment, a small twist of resignation. “Anyway, Jamie couldn’t come, and so here we are on our own. You don’t mind?”
I didn’t mind.
“You can put your things in his room, and then I’ll show you round.”
The tour of the house didn’t last long. It was not like Gilead House. On the ground floor, along with Jamie’s bedroom, were the kitchen, dining room, and bathroom. Upstairs was the sitting room and her own bedroom. I caught a glimpse through the half-open door: the colors blue and white, a red dress hanging like a bloody skin on a wardrobe door.
“That’s it,” she said. “Hardly a palace, but at least there’s no box room to clear out. It’s going to be a bit of a strange weekend. Just us two, I mean. I hope you don’t mind. Perhaps we can go to a film or something. There’s this one called Billy Liar.”'
She had prepared dinner. I had imagined going out with Jamie to a hamburger place or something. Bright lights, bright colors, loud music. But I got boeuf bourguignon and candlelight. She even changed for dinner — the red dress that I’d glimpsed hanging on the wardrobe in her bedroom, red satin gleaming in the candlelight like fresh blood. And there was my birthday present. It was there beside my plate, a small packet wrapped in black paper and tied in a gold ribbon. “Did you think I’d forgotten?” she asked.
“I didn’t even think.”
“Well, open it.”
I fumbled with the wrapping and pulled out a box. I knew from the shape, half-knew anyway, guessed. Tissot it said in elegant script. Tissot was the name of a painter. Why that should occur to me at that moment, I have no idea. “Tissot is a painter,” I said.
“Well, it’s not a painting, I’m afraid. It’s not really big enough.” She laughed, giggled almost, as though the amusement inside her was threatening to run out of control. Was she laughing at me? “Go on, open it,” and I went on and opened it and found there, lying prostrate on a bed of dark-blue velvet, a wristwatch. It had one of those gold bracelets, not a leather strap like my old one. A piece of jewelry. She raised her glass. By now it was a Californian red, a Cabernet Sauvignon with a full bouquet and a decisive aftertaste of black currants, so the label told me. “Happy birthday, Robert.”
How would I explain it? To my mother, to my friends, how would I explain it, for God’s sake? “I can’t,” I managed to say.
Her voice was gently mocking. “Can’t you? It’s not difficult. You wind it up, and it just sort of goes.”
I blushed, fumbling awkwardly with the thing. “I can’t accept it, I mean.”
“Why ever not?”
“Because it’s too much.”
“How much is my affair. It’s just a watch. To help you tell the time. I noticed that yours was a little battered, and I thought you’d like another.”
Mine was an H. Samuel Everite, as advertised on Radio Luxembourg, which was the only radio station that ever played decent music. Mine had been given to me by my mother for my thirteenth birthday. This was Tissot. Swiss. Twenty-one jewels, so it claimed, and who was I to doubt it? I wound the watch up, and it began to go with a smooth, slick movement that I could only just hear when I held it to my ear — like the hurrying away of time itself. I slipped it onto my wrist and looked at
it quite casually, as though it had always been there. It had gold hands. Hands was the wrong word. These were altogether sharper than hands, more piercing, more acute. Daggers, arrows. Time’s arrows. I felt an uncomfortable mixture of gratitude and resentment, and underneath it all the faintly erotic sensation of having been exploited. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Try, thank you.”
Should I offer to kiss her? Should I lean across the table and kiss her chastely on the cheek? Was this what she was expecting? I glanced at my new watch and watched my dining companion watching me, and wondered if my armpits smelled and if my acne showed. Beads of sweat gathered in a swarm on my forehead and crawled like insects down into my incipient sideburns. “Thank you.”
“I hope you’ll be very happy together,” she said with a smile. To my relief she got up to clear the plates away. I mopped my brow and sipped my wine with its aftertaste of black currant, and glanced at the cool face of my watch, which smiled at me smugly and told me that the time was nine-fifteen, at which point the telephone rang. It was my mother. I could hear Caroline speaking to her out in the hall. “Robert’s right here,” she was saying. “I’ll pass you over. Lovely to hear you, Di.”
Is there, I wondered, anything quite so humiliating as mothers? I’d told her where I’d be for the weekend. It was my bloody fault.
“Robbie?” said the voice on the far end of the line. “Is that you?”
“Of course it’s me.”
“How are you?”
“I’m fine.”
“How’s Jamie?”
I sweated the guilt of connivance. “Oh, he’s fine too. I guess.”
“It’s been a long time.”
“Yes.”
“And Meg?”
“Meg?”
Meg smiled conspiratorially at me. We both knew she was Caroline. Meg was dull and old-fashioned. Caroline was sparkling new.
“Jamie’s mother,” the voice said in my ear. “Whom do you think I meant?”
“Oh. Oh, yes. She’s fine. She gave me a birthday present.”
“How nice.”
“A watch.”
There was a pause. “A watch?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t that rather extravagant?”
“Is it?” I could picture her behind the reception desk in the hall, smiling distractedly at guests as they went out to find something, anything to eat in Llandudno on a Friday evening. Nothing like boeuf bourguignon.
“But you’ve already got a watch.”
“Not like this one.”
“What’s it like? Is it expensive?”
“It’s a watch. Swiss. It’s all right. Fabulous, actually.”
There was a silence. “What are you doing?”
“Doing? Having supper. Dinner.”
“That’s nice.” Another pause. Then, “Can you talk?”
“Of course I can.”
“I mean, she’s not there near you?”
She. My mind caught its foot in the word and stumbled. “Well, yes, of course. But it makes no difference.” It made a hell of a difference. She was standing right beside me, almost close enough to hear my mother’s tinny voice in the earpiece, certainly close enough to impart her perfume to the conversation. It made a difference all right.
“He’s not there, is he?” my mother’s voice insisted in my ear.
“Who’s not?”
“Jamie. Jamie’s not there.”
“What do you mean?”
She whispered the words. Perhaps she thought she might be overheard: “I’m not a fool.”
“Of course you’re not —”
“Well?”
“Well what?”
“He’s not there. Is he?”
“Couldn’t be apparently.”
“So you’re on your own, just the two of you?”
“I suppose so.” There was another silence. “Mum? Are you there?”
“Yes, I’m here,” she said. “I don’t like you there on your own.”
“What do you mean?”
Another pause. “With Meg.”
“What do you mean, Mum?”
“I mean just you be careful”.
“Of course I will, Mum. Of course I will.” Then the line went dead. I replaced the receiver with care and looked around at my hostess.
She raised her eyebrows. “Well? How is Diana?”
I shrugged. “She’ll recover.” Quite what I meant, I don’t know; but that’s what I said. There was a silence. It was the silence before an avalanche, a silence punctuated with whisperings — of snow, of fracture and fragmentation, of the awful imminence of disaster. Then Caroline laughed. Laughter is the most dangerous thing. People have died laughing. I guess avalanches have been caused by laughter. Apart from sex (and that’s often doubtful) the only thing two human beings can be certain of sharing is laughter. Caroline laughed, and I followed her. Caroline Matthewson, forty-something years old, and Robert Dewar, barely sixteen, an incongruous couple no doubt, laughed together. And of course within a few seconds of this shared laughter, she had put out her hand to touch my arm, and I’d held her arm in return, and then both her arms, and then quite suddenly, but not unexpectedly, we were holding each other’s arms and stepping inside the circle of intimacy that is drawn around every human being, and the laughter had stopped.
“She’ll recover,” I repeated. And she lifted herself up on her toes and touched her lips against mine as though to stop me prolonging the joke.
This was not the first time I had ever kissed a woman. There had been a few others: a sallow, shallow girl who, on the fringes of a school dance, had condescended to have my tongue stuck into her mouth; a cousin I had once pretended to like; the sister of a school friend who had come to a summer camp; that kind of temporary, expedient arrangement. But there had never been anything of this nature, never this faint brush of what seemed like silk, never the pressure of this sleek pulp, and the small bud of a tongue that grew at the opening and pushed its way between my lips and touched my own tongue, and then drew back as though to invite me in. Never this intimate connection, eyes closed, head twisted as I had seen it done in the films, my head turned one way, hers the other, making what seemed a perfect fit. There was the savor of boeuf bourguignon, of garlic and wine, mushrooms and shallots (she had explained the recipe to me) — a bitter, complex, foreign taste.
After what seemed an age, she released me and laid her cheek against mine. “Oh, dear,” she whispered. “Perhaps we shouldn’t have done that. What do you think?”
“I think it’s all right.”
She pulled back and looked up at me. “Do you?”
“Yes, I do.” I did. I felt ill with the certainty that everything was all right.
“Robert, I didn’t mean this to happen. I really don’t know. Whatever would Diana say? Or Jamie. Perhaps…”
“Perhaps what?”
“I’ve no idea what perhaps.”
“Neither have I.”
We laughed again. Laughter seemed the easiest thing. “I was going to suggest a film. That we go to a film, or something. Lawrence of Arabia perhaps. If you haven’t seen it.”
“You mentioned Billy Liar.”
“Or that. But perhaps we should stay in. What do you think?” She picked up the bottle of wine and our two glasses from the table. The bottle was almost empty, but my cup was brimming over.
“Perhaps we should,” I said. “Stay in, I mean.” Perhaps seemed to dominate our small and claustrophobic world. A whole world of perhaps, a whole universe of possibilities. On the stairs going up to the sitting room, she stumbled for a moment. Suddenly and surprisingly she seemed rather vulnerable, a fragile figure, no longer quite in control of matters. “Do you want some music? I went round to the record shop and bought what’s just come out.” She knelt beside the record player, her dress taut across her thighs, and scrabbled through a pile of discs, tossing them this way and that. “What do you think?”
Of what? I thought a
dozen things, but few that I could put into precise words. The music hammered out, the Rolling Stones just wanting to make love to you, baby. She got to her feet. What did I think of what? What did I think of her standing there in the middle of the room reaching around the back of that dress? Was that the question? Did she need help? That’s what I thought. What does a single woman do when she needs help zipping or unzipping her dress? Had Helen Gurley Brown said anything about it? I’d read her book. Someone had brought it to school, and we’d flicked through it to find the bits about sex. Hair is sexy, lots of it, but not around your nipples. Things like that.
I heard a zip go. Apparently you didn’t need help. Apparently you could do it by yourself, even when you were slightly unsteady on your feet, as Caroline was, even when you are skipping on one foot in order to kick off the shoe that’s on the other foot. You can do both these things at the same time. I watched her shoes go rolling across the carpet. Her dress was suddenly loose at the front, leaning forward like an opera diva taking a bow. “Do you want this?” she asked. “Please, Robert, say if you don’t.”
I tried to appear relaxed about it all, as though this had happened so often that it was rather tiresome. “I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”
And then there was a soft rush of sound, and the dress lay like a hemorrhage around her feet and she was standing there in her underwear. Golden satin. You don’t forget these things. “Do you like me like this?” she asked.
Caroline. Jamie’s mother, for Christ’s sake. My own mother’s once-upon-a-time best friend. It was extraordinary how many different things I could think at the same time. The wife of the famous mountaineering hero Guy Matthewson. The sight of her was branded into my mind, an image I’d never forget. I knew that. This moment would always be there in memory — Jamie’s mother there in the middle of the sitting-room carpet undoing her golden satin bra and stepping out of her golden satin knickers, and asking “Do you like me like this?” and surely not expecting no for an answer. I swallowed something sticky and obstructive, and said, “Yes,” which was only the truth. I remember, with all the obsessive interest of a sixteen-year-old, that although she was blond, her pubic hair was dark, almost black. And, for a glimmer of a moment, I thought that she had a great deal more of it than Bethan.