by Rosie Thomas
‘And so?’ He might as well be persistent, he thought. You could only get so far with tact and circumspection.
Roxana appeared to consider. ‘I would like to be friends.’
For Roxana this was an offer of far greater value than mere sex, because sex was handed over in a transaction or taken in violence. For Noah, it was a brush-off. They misunderstood each other.
He sighed, and then smiled.
‘Okay. So we will. And now I think it will be best if I take myself off to the sofa.’
They both stood up, bumped into each other as they tried to place their mugs in the sink, stepped quickly back again, turned awkwardly aside. Roxana saw him resignedly ease himself down on the sofa, bend his long legs to fit the shorter space and pull the cover up to his chin. She clicked the light off at the wall and retreated into the bedroom.
She lay down too, but sleep was a long way off. All she could think of was Noah’s face, crumpled against the cushions, and the way the tip of his finger had nudged against hers. She was lying in his bed, safe under his roof, with the New Zealand boys who played rugby lined up downstairs like a row of innocent, beefy bodyguards. In spite of her uncertainty, in the darkness she laughed. Then she kicked off the bedclothes and marched back to the door. She switched the light on again and Noah sat up, blinking at her.
‘Come in?’ she asked.
He hesitated, but it was an invitation that he was physically incapable of refusing.
Still, he went slowly, knowing that she was offering herself because she felt indebted to him, because he had manoeuvred her into an awkward position. Roxana lay down on her side, her knees drawn up and her hand curled out towards him.
The edge of the mattress gave under his weight. He lay down with his body as far away from hers as possible, then he gently took her hand. She sighed and clasped his in return. Noah looked up and saw that there was grey light creeping round the edges of the skylight blind.
‘Close your eyes,’ he murmured, stroking the back of her hand with his thumb. ‘Everything is all right.’
To his surprise, he fell almost immediately into a deep sleep.
When he woke, the first thing he saw was Roxana’s shoulder and the rounded swell of her upper arm. He lay without moving, listening to the sound of her breathing. He heard the water running as Andy took a shower, then a series of bumps and a brief snatch of music before the radio was turned down. The smell of burned toast made Roxana stir. She rolled onto her back and in the pale light he saw her eyes open.
She turned her head towards him, her face still filmed with sleep.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Hello Noah.’ Her mouth curved in a smile and they lay looking into the worlds within each other’s eyes. Slowly, Noah shifted himself towards her. She didn’t move back or try to push him away. Her smile broadened slightly, and then his lips touched hers.
There were some more thumps, and finally the door slammed as Andy departed for work.
‘What time is it?’ Roxana murmured when the kiss ended. Noah’s fingertips gently traced her jaw line, then ran down to the warm notch at the base of her smooth throat.
‘No idea. Half eight?’
‘You have to go to work.’
‘I think…I think I might pull a sickie.’
Roxana’s eyes were dancing.
‘What is that?’
‘A sickie is when you don’t go to work for a whole day. You stay in bed, like this. Doing this…’ His fingers trailed downwards, found a small round breast.
‘I see,’ she sighed. Her spine arched, like a stroked cat.
‘Come here.’
She didn’t move. But she was still smiling. ‘Why don’t you come here?’
He slid across the remaining inch or so of sheet and suddenly connected with the whole silky length of her body. Her arms snaked round him and held him tight.
‘Now I have you.’
‘So you do,’ he agreed. He took her hand, and guided it.
Andy came in at about seven o’clock.
Roxana had left for The Cosmos and it was eight hours before Noah could even hope to see and touch her again. He’d wanted to take her to work, and to stay there to watch over her, but she had absolutely forbidden him to do anything of the kind. She had plastered her two hands over his mouth as a gag.
‘No. No. Do you understand me?’
He broke away and rolled on top of her. ‘Not really. You have this very, very strange accent.’
‘Listen to me. Dancing is just dancing. It doesn’t mean anything.’
He kissed the inside of one wrist. ‘I know. Just come back soon, right?’
She had gone, and now he was sitting watching the Channel 4 News.
‘All right, mate?’ Andy said. He let his bag flop off his shoulder.
‘Yeah, thanks, not bad at all.’
‘How was your day?’
‘I didn’t go in.’
Andy reached into the fridge and took out a beer. He popped the ring and expertly captured the rising froth beneath his upper lip. He took a long, eager swallow.
‘Ah. That’s better. So, are you shagging her yet, then?’
Noah raised his eyebrows. He didn’t even need to glance about him to see their shared quarters in full detail. There were magazines and last weekend’s colour supplements on the floor and sofa, interleaved with takeaway flyers. Clothing belonging to both of them hung on the backs of chairs and there was a jumble of trainers in the niche to the left of the front door. It wasn’t squalid, but it wasn’t orderly either. They both understood the unwritten rules of sharing, one of which was that they should conduct most of their sex lives elsewhere. More recently, in Noah’s case, it had happened at Lauren’s neat flat. When he had removed her teddy bear from its place of honour on the pillow.
When Noah didn’t answer, Andy grinned. ‘I’ll take that as a yes.’
‘Take it as whatever you want.’
‘Uh-huh.’ Andy drank some more beer, settled himself into his usual chair and paid a minute’s attention to Jon Snow.
‘So,’ he began again. ‘Does it look serious?’
‘Too soon to tell,’ Noah conceded. Remembering the details of the day made him almost lose the studied cool he and Andy maintained around each other. He allowed himself a smile, though. ‘Maybe.’
‘Look, mate. Whatever. It’s just that…’ Andy waved his hand to indicate the limitations of their space.
‘I know,’ Noah interrupted. ‘It’s only till the weekend. She hasn’t a clue about the Western world, let alone London. I’ll help her find a room, and then she’ll be sorted.’
Andy nodded and returned his attention to the television. ‘Sweet, mate.’ He found the remote down the side of his chair and began to click through the channels. ‘Isn’t the athletics on now?’
‘No idea,’ Noah sighed.
Bill fanned the coals until they glowed, and then stood back to watch the scarlet fade to ash-grey. It was a warm Sunday in July, and therefore, in theory, the perfect opportunity for a family barbecue.
In many ways his marriage to Jeanette had been a conventional one. He had built up a business, a City PR firm that had remained small but was now well-regarded and quite successful, while Jeanette had run their home. Once Noah was old enough for school, with Bill’s encouragement Jeanette had built on her undergraduate science degree by taking a postgraduate diploma in plant taxonomy. She had discovered a passion for botany and plant classification. For years she had worked at a botanical garden, with a small team of long-standing colleagues who specialised in plant diversity and conservation techniques. It was stimulating work in an environment where her deafness was not a serious impediment, but it had also left her with enough time to be a regular wife and mother.
Lately, though, Bill had had to take over responsibilities around the house. He thought his cooking was improving, and Jeanette insisted that it was, but still a barbecue had seemed the best option for today. Bill had always done the bar
becuing.
Noah was coming to lunch, and he had asked if he could bring his new girl. He wanted Jeanette to meet her. Both of them to meet her, he had corrected himself, without managing to withdraw the implication that Jeanette didn’t have much time to take the measure of new girlfriends.
Connie was coming too.
Jeanette had asked for this, and Connie had accepted the invitation.
It was going to be a family party. Bill could count the precedents for this on the fingers of two hands.
Jeanette was sitting in her usual place in the shade of the tree. She was wearing a straw hat, her head bent to deepen the shade over her face, intent on shelling peas into a colander. Bill straightened up to look at her.
It was simple, he thought. After twenty-five years loyalty and affection and habit took the place of love. Or perhaps at some point in their history, love had become these things. Whichever way it was, when he remembered that next summer she would not be here in her garden, he found himself in tears. He often cried these days. The tears came without warning, like a child’s or an old man’s. Then, just as suddenly, the grip of sorrow released him again.
Whereas where Connie was concerned, nothing was simple.
All their long history had been constructed out of negatives: out of guilt and then denial, pain, then more guilt and absence, and long silence.
And yet still, with the knowledge that soon he would see her, even with his dying wife quietly shelling peas a few feet away from him, Bill was fired up with anticipation as fierce as a boy’s.
The coals in the barbecue pan were breaking into surreptitious flames. From his array of barbecuing equipment, mostly past birthday offerings from Noah, he selected a metal spray canister and spritzed the flames into submission. When he looked up again Connie was walking across the grass. She was wearing jeans, flip-flops, a basket slung over her shoulder.
‘There was no answer to the bell so I came round the side,’ she called.
He met her halfway, grasped her by the wrists and kissed her cheek. She was warm, flushed with the sun, and her hair was damp at the nape of her neck.
‘Glad you’re here,’ he said.
Jeanette sat up. Connie turned so she could read her lips.
‘How are you? How’s the week been?’
– Good. Quite good today, Jeanette answered. – How about you?
Connie knelt beside the chair and Jeanette leaned forwards, pushing back the brim of her hat so their cheeks touched. From her basket Connie produced a row of little gifts: a magazine with an article on plant names, a jar of manuka honey, a ridged wooden cylinder that you were supposed to roll beneath your feet to massage away tension.
Bill watched as they passed the various items back and forth between them. There was no physical resemblance, of course, but their gestures mirrored each other. At a glance you might assume that they were siblings, and then wonder why you had jumped to that conclusion.
‘Let me get you a drink, Con. Glass of wine?’
‘Please.’
– Me too, Jeanette indicated.
‘Coming up.’ Bill carried the colander full of shelled peas into the house, tipped them into a pan, took a bottle of white wine out of the fridge. When he went out into the garden again he saw that Connie was sitting on the grass beside Jeanette. They were not quite looking at each other and a pool of silence spilled between them, but even so, for the first time that he could ever remember, it was Bill who felt like the outsider.
He poured wine into three glasses. Jeanette lifted her head and smiled at him; as Connie reached upwards she angled her legs and her ankles showed under the turned-up bottoms of her jeans. All three raised their glasses in a wordless toast. There were wood pigeons throatily cooing in the tall trees.
Noah and a girl emerged round the side of the house, the same way that Connie had come.
‘Hi, here we are. Mum, Dad, this is Roxana.’
Roxana was wearing a denim jacket over a short full skirt made of some sort of sweatshirt material that revealed an almost unfeasible length of leg; it wasn’t a reticent outfit, but her expression contradicted her appearance. She looked taken aback by the size of the house and the expanse of the garden.
She shook Jeanette’s and then Bill’s hand very quickly and stepped back beside Noah.
Noah turned to his aunt. This was not the time to let the faintest wrinkle of uncertainty crease the smooth surface of goodwill. Noah gave her a generous hug and Connie embraced her nephew warmly in return.
‘Hello Auntie Con,’ Noah said. ‘How’ve you been?’
‘Noah. It’s so good to see you,’ she smiled. He had filled out and lost the accusatory glare of adolescence, and the resemblance to his father had deepened.
He introduced Roxana. Roxana’s hand was cool. She gave Connie a quick glance under mascara-heavy lashes.
‘You are Noah’s aunt, he told me.’
Connie was thinking how striking she was.
‘Yes. Jeanette and I are sisters.’ It sounded simple enough.
Jeanette stood up. She was the shortest of the group anyway, and so reduced now as to seem hardly bigger than a child, but she commanded attention. She took Roxana firmly by the arm.
‘I like your garden very much,’ Roxana told her politely, then glanced to Noah for confirmation that she was doing the right thing.
‘Mum can follow everything,’ Noah told her. ‘You’ll be surprised. It’s difficult for her when everyone speaks all at once, but otherwise it’s no problem. And she can talk. You’ll get the hang of it. It’s stopping her that’s the problem, half the time.’
He grinned and Jeanette shook her head at him. She held on to Roxana’s arm and pointed towards the length of the garden. With a sweep of a hand she encompassed her flowerbeds.
– Come with us, she beckoned Connie. Connie took her other side and they began a tour of the borders.
Bill and Noah watched them.
‘It’s okay that Connie’s here, then?’ Noah said in a low voice.
‘Yes. Your mum wants to see her. I’m glad of that.’
‘It still feels a bit weird to me.’
Bill put on an apron with Natural Born Griller printed on the front, another of Noah’s offerings.
‘Cool pinny, Dad. Suits you.’
‘Yes. Thank you. Everything about dying is weird, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah. How are you with it?’
‘Death?’ Bill used a pair of tongs to lift chicken portions out of a marinade, and laid the meat on the barbecue. Dripping juices caused the red coals to sizzle and spit. ‘I’m finding the inevitability, the non-negotiability, quite hard to accept. Just at the moment. I’ll probably get my mind round it.’
‘I know what you mean. I keep on thinking, look, this isn’t right. Surely we could do this, or that, and she’ll get better. Even though we know she won’t. I was asking more about Connie being here, though.’
‘I see. Well. Jeanette and Connie predate you, you know. They predate me as well. It’s right that they should come back together now, in spite of all the problems in their history. It’s important. It’s all that matters, in fact. I’m full of admiration for your mother, for having the will to make it happen. And I admire Connie too.’
Noah put an arm round his father’s shoulders. ‘You’re such a good, good person, Dad, you know?’
Bill laughed briefly. ‘You didn’t always think that.’
‘You know what kids are like.’
‘Righteous.’
‘A total pain. But I’m a grown man now, I’m not insisting on black or white. I can acknowledge grey. You know, Dad, I love you.’
‘Yes,’ Bill said, as composedly as he could. He turned a chicken portion, revealing a browned underside frilled with burned edges. ‘I love you too.’
They could say these things to each other now, whereas once it would have seemed impossible. Bill told himself that here was something to hold on to, at the very least. He slung the tongs over the rail at t
he side of the barbecue burner and wiped his palms over the Griller slogan. He nodded his head towards the three women, who were just reaching the end of the garden.
‘She looks like an interesting girl.’
Noah beamed. ‘Roxana is an amazing girl,’ he said. ‘I have never met anyone like her.’
‘That’s good to hear. I’m very pleased. I’m looking forward to getting to know her. Now, how are we doing with this food? Noah, will you go in the house for me and put the potatoes on? Just the spuds, not the peas yet, otherwise the peas’ll be…’
‘…Yeah, Dad, right. I’m not a total loser in the kitchen, as it happens.’
‘Just do it.’
‘Christ,’ Noah sighed.
Roxana gazed at the tall blue spires and the low misty-blue mounds and the clumps of grey velvet leaves. She had never been in a garden like this. She had no idea what the flowers were called, she had never even seen most of them. Noah’s mother and aunt were making a kind of duet out of telling her about them. They seemed to talk fluently, with only one of them speaking.
‘Those are delphiniums. Those, I don’t know – Jeanette? Oh yes, it’s nepeta.’
Jeanette made a low sound and Connie added, ‘Catmint, yes.’
‘These, um, roses, what a nice colour. I have never seen one like this. What kind are they?’
At least she knew roses. Roxana was trying hard. Her jaw muscles strained with politeness, and all the time Noah’s mother was looking at her with inquisitive eyes.
The two women conferred. Noah’s aunt was quite tall, and interesting to look at. Her plain white shirt with rolled-up sleeves set off her beautiful skin and she was wearing a very thin gold bracelet around her right wrist. Roxana thought she looked very chic, so much so that she made Roxana want to tug at the hem of her own skirt and straighten out the creases in her jacket. It was difficult to make the same sort of appraisal of Noah’s mother, and Roxana knew that that was because she was very ill. Her face had an ageless look to it, so that she might have been sixteen or sixty, with too-big eyes and faded hair as thin and tufty as a young child’s. She and Noah must once have looked quite alike, with similar mouths and cheekbones, but now Noah was more like his father. They had the same fair, faintly reddish tinge to their skin and the same amused quietness in their manner that still expected to be heard.