The Grass Memorial

by Sarah Harrison

  ‘They’ve gone on to keep the table warm.’

  ‘Fair enough. Want this? I never touch the filthy stuff myself.’

  ‘Hand it over, it’s time I diluted.’

  ‘The old man’s enjoying himself,’ observed Brian. ‘All this has done him no end of good. He’s a bit vague these days, but the life and soul this evening. He needs to get out more.’

  Stella thought: life and soul? Maybe – but where did mind fit in?

  In the Ladies at the restaurant, side by side at the mirror, George said, ‘Sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay.’

  ‘You know me, I lead a very sheltered life so I get pissed at parties. Derek’s a nice man.’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘And I bet he has a nice wife.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know, we haven’t met as yet.’

  ‘I see.’ George peered at her own reflection and sighed gustily. ‘God in heaven, I can do no more! Anyway, you and he are a hot ticket. I was all aglow with pride out front today, we both were.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  There was a silence while Stella scrunched and tweaked at her hair, and George watched. She thought: Don’t. Please don’t ask, or sympathise, or show how well you understand me . . . or say anything at all. But she could feel the question coming like the flurry of air that heralds an approaching train in the underground.

  ‘Still seeing Robert?’

  ‘I have been from time to time. Okay.’ She turned from the mirror. ‘Shall we?’

  George didn’t move. ‘How is it with him?’

  ‘The same. Look, George, I know—’

  ‘Still married?’

  ‘As far as I know.’

  ‘Come on.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So it’s been, what, seven years? Nearly a decade—’

  ‘Six years actually.’

  ‘Okay, but too long. Too long for a drop-dead wonderful person like you to be hanging about on the end of a phone waiting for a call from some clichéd married creep who wants to have his cake and shag it.’

  ‘Cut it out, George.’ Stella’s head began to hurt. ‘It isn’t like that.’

  ‘It’s always like that.’

  ‘Really?’ She smiled sourly, and opened the door as another woman walked in. ‘And I should know, hmm?’

  On the way up the stairs George tried to apologise discreetly, in a deafening hiss. ‘Stella, I’m sorry. Again already. But I care about you.’

  ‘Good!’ She walked back into the restaurant with a big smile. ‘Let’s hope we never meet when you don’t give a shit.’

  She got through dinner on auto-pilot. Made a short, self-deprecating speech. Said she hoped they’d all tell their friends. Told them she and Derek were available for barmitzvahs, eighteenths and silver weddings. Said success wouldn’t change her, she’d stay tight-fisted as ever. Asked if they liked the frock and said just as well because at that price she wouldn’t be getting another. Thanked Derek, Miles, God and her parents. Did her Stella Carlyle number, in fact, then and for three solid hours thereafter. Drank twice as much as anyone else at the table and failed to get even half as drunk. Wanted only to put her head down amid the crumbs, the ashtrays and the wine stains and weep with rage and loneliness.

  Towards the end George pushed over her programme, a menu and a biro.

  ‘Beg pardon but I’m entitled to do naff things, I’m your sister. Sign those, there’s a pet. One and a spare.’

  ‘For the kids?’

  Brian hee-hawed. ‘Stuff that, we’re the ones who need the social cachet.’

  On the menu George had written in eyeliner: ‘Are you in love with the bastard? Please advise, X for yes, XX for no.’

  She signed it ‘Stella Carlyle, with love’ and the programme ‘To two top people, George and Brian, with lots of love, Stella’, adding no kisses to either of them.

  ‘Spoilsport,’ said George. ‘I shall take that as a no.’

  Stella had ordered a cab for her parents to take them to their hotel, and when the waiter came to tell them it had arrived she went out with them on to the pavement. Her mother kissed her and held her face for a moment, brushing her cheeks gently with her thumbs as if wiping away tears.

  ‘It was a triumph, darling. Well done.’

  ‘Thanks, I’m glad you enjoyed it.’ She sounded stiff but couldn’t help it. ‘And thanks for the flowers.’

  Mary laughed. ‘Coals to Newcastle as it turned out!’

  ‘They meant a lot to me, I shall take them home. ‘Bye, Dad.’

  ‘ ’Bye, old thing, take care of yourself. Love to the girls.’ Stella avoided her mother’s eye as Andrew turned to the taxi driver. ‘Paddington, and don’t spare the horses.’

  ‘The Royal Lancaster, Drew.’ Mary smiled at her daughter. ‘You can tell how seldom we stay in town.’

  Andrew shrugged extravagantly, hands lifted, eyes to the heavens. ‘Royal Lancaster then, woman, it’s all the same to me.’

  ‘That’s right, you do what she says, mate, best policy in my experience.’ The driver chuckled matily as they got in, but only Andrew joined in.

  When all the others had gone Stella and Derek had a chaser courtesy of the management. Single malt for him. Jack Daniel’s for her.

  ‘Satisfied?’ he asked. ‘You should be.’

  ‘We haven’t seen the crits. And we’ve got the whole run ahead of us yet.’

  ‘Bloody hell!’ he said cheerfully.‘If ever I heard a glass-half-empty remark that’s got to be it.’ He sang, waggling his hands like a riverboat minstrel,‘ “Live, love, laugh and be happy!” Suit yourself.’

  ‘I’m pleased, I’m pleased, okay?’ She fiddled about, lighting a cigarette. ‘Derek . . .’

  ‘Spit it out.’

  ‘Would a shag be out of the question?’

  ‘O-oh, no! You don’t get to use me as a stand-in. Or a lay-down.’

  ‘You wouldn’t be.’

  ‘Give me some credit, girl,’ he said gently,‘your fella didn’t show.’

  ‘No.’

  He put his hand over hers, a huge hand that covered it completely.

  ‘He couldn’t make it, but he will another time. He’s a doctor, right? They have funny lives, I’ve seen it on the telly.’

  She shot him a wry, bitter look. ‘Any moment now you’ll be telling me to trust him.’

  ‘It’s none of my business, darling.’

  ‘That’s true. No –’ she shook her head ‘—I didn’t mean that. As a matter of fact I appreciate your taking his side. It leaves me free to say what a stinking, cheating, worthless fucking lowlife he is.’

  ‘Go, Carlyle!’ said Derek. ‘Ain’t love a bitch?’

  When she’d left the flat at five she had been winding up for the performance. She was so wired that she could scarcely remember what she’d been doing, only anticipate what was ahead. But returning in the small hours the evidence of her preparations was all there. The clean white sheets and the drawn blinds, the extra towel and the Crabtree & Evelyn soap, the Courtney Pine CD in place, the chilled fizz and the fresh jar of Marmite . . . The church candles, God help her, on the mantelpiece.

  The candles were an invitation to do something she’d always wanted to do, and sweep her arm the length of the mantelpiece, carrying them with it. The action was satisfying, the result less so, because though the candles split into chunks they were held together by their wicks and she found herself drunkenly trying to reassemble them. You sad, sad cow, she thought, you can’t even break something properly any more.

  There was no message on the machine, no e-mail, no hand-delivered note. Just a big nothing and the broken candles standing like uneven towers of children’s bricks on the floor. She hated him. Swore to herself that if she hadn’t always been too proud to ask for his number, this was when she’d have rung him and blown his poxy life apart before getting the hell out. She even got as far as picking up the telephone directory, but he wasn’t in her area, and she didn’t even have his home address
to offer to directory enquiries. Humiliated by her desperation and her ignorance, she hurled the directory across the room.

  She went to bed but couldn’t sleep. This was it, she told herself enough. George had been right, it was always like this. She’d slept with enough married men to know that they were the most chickenshit people on earth, which was why she didn’t care how she treated them. Derek was right too. About love, she supposed. Maybe. Every-fucking-body was right! She was right, for Christ’s sake, she wasn’t stupid, she knew the score, she’d been round the block so many times she could have done the trip with her eyes shut.

  It wasn’t even as if she had cleaved exclusively unto Robert Vitelio. Now that would be sad. She’d taken a nip from what was available now and again, here and there, to remind herself that she was a free agent and it could still be done. But the high, the sense of power that the casual encounters used to give her, simply wasn’t there any more. She was heading towards forty, it was beginning to feel wrong, as though she were trying (and failing) to prove something. With the exception of this evening’s lapse with Derek, which in any case she had known he would turn down, she had kept herself to herself for the best part of a year now. To herself and him.

  It was as if a great heavy cog wheel were grinding round inside her, heaving painfully into another gear.The resistance was powerful, but the wheel would get to where it needed to be eventually. And then she would have to accept that she was in love with this man, and decide what, if anything, was to be done about it. The lack of Xs on George’s menu was a cop-out, but like a cheating alcoholic she wasn’t yet ready to stand up and be counted.

  There had been perhaps a dozen occasions over the past few years when they’d had a few days together – never more than a long weekend – and Stella had nervously discovered what it might be like to be a couple: begun to find out where they fitted and where they rubbed, not just in bed but in the real world of supermarkets, roadmaps, bathrooms, cinemas and domestic gadgets; which foods each of them couldn’t stand, who could cook what, who bathed and who showered and at what time of day, who preferred tea and who coffee, which papers they read, how quickly and when, how their respective body clocks were set. How (she could no longer avoid the word) to compromise.

  Most of these weekends were spent in Britain, a few in Italy and France, one or two at her flat. She never, on principle, asked him how he managed the time for them, what lies he’d told, what risks he ran. She knew that if she once started making his problems her own she’d have handed over her precious independence on a plate. It was difficult enough spending even that limited time on her own with him – she had never shared such large chunks of her life with any man, it increased a thousandfold her baffled and grudging respect for those who voluntarily took on marriage. They didn’t get much sleep when they were together, and he was an habitual early riser unused to napping during the day. The unsocial hours of her work meant that she habitually slept late. Consequently there was often only a window of a few hours in the middle of the day when their moods and energy levels meshed. She lost count of the number of films whose ending she had to supply for him, and mornings when he shook her awake impatiently at eleven o’clock, unable to put the day off any longer.

  Their relationship, she often felt, was like a fruit machine, nearly always arbitrarily mismatching their moods and behaviour patterns but just occasionally, when all the strawberries were in a row, showering them with an emotional jackpot. And those glimpses of what they were capable of kept them going through the long-drawn-out attrition of deceit and impatience and competitiveness and remorse. And passion – she must never forget the passion, through which they could always communicate when words and gestures faded.

  There had been a twenty-four-hour escape in a northern city where Stella and Derek were on tour and Robert was attending a conference. Such a coincidence, providing them with an unlooked-for opportunity to be together without lies, was in itself rare enough, but for some reason (perhaps the lack of lies was itself the reason) they were at their best. They’d met on the Sunday morning and driven out into the high, austere countryside and walked for miles in a thumping rainwashed wind and fitful sunshine. The openness, the sense of being allowed to be together, made them relax. Each had spent the previous days in their own element and was now ready to unwind, to listen and make space for the other. They had lunch in a pub, and then retraced their steps to the car in the cool gathering dark of the afternoon.

  Back in the city they’d checked into a hotel, made love and slept. In the early evening, looking for somewhere to have dinner, they’d found themselves near the cathedral close and gone in to stand at the back of choral evensong. Susceptible unbelievers that they both were, they were moved by the soaring music, the immutable grandeur of the building, the rolling cadences of the spoken words.

  ‘Does it mean anything?’ she’d asked as they walked out into the wet-black night.

  ‘Does it have to?’

  ‘It would be handy if it did.’

  They were walking close together, strides matched but not touching, hands in pockets. He never held her hand or put his arm round her in public, it wasn’t his style. Far from resenting this outward coolness she found it almost unbearably sexy. Before they emerged from the dim secrecy of the close into the prosaic brightness of the street, Robert stopped and looked up at the sky.

  ‘That depends,’ he said, ‘whether you’re godless or God-free.’

  ‘What’s the difference?’

  ‘Same as children. Plenty of people don’t have them, but some want them and some don’t.’

  ‘And which are you?’

  ‘About God? Less, not free. I’m like you, I wouldn’t half like there to be one. But that said—’ he began walking again ‘—I’ll need a hell of a lot of persuading.’

  Apart from this one brief exchange Stella could not remember what they’d talked about that evening. That was because for once they were so in tune, so receptive to one another, that she could scarcely tell where he began and she ended. For a moment as they sat over the second bottle and the wavering candle, she caught herself thinking: This must be happiness, and was shaken by the impertinence of the thought. The night that followed was different from other nights, too – a dreamlike, timeless slipping in and out of love, a profound sensual mutuality. The next morning there was none of that sense of angry torn edges and unfinished business that so often accompanied their partings. They were calmer, more sure, than they had ever been.

  Holding open the car door for her, he’d lifted her hand and pressed the palm over his mouth, not so much kissing it as breathing it in.

  Eyes closed, he whispered: ‘I’m scared to say anything.’

  ‘Me too. So let’s not.’

  ‘We’re such cowards.’

  ‘I don’t care if you don’t.’

  He’d returned her hand to her, placing it over her heart, and walked away.

  For days she had lived in the afterglow of that weekend, its seamless harmony and deep delight.

  * * * * *

  But it was to prove the exception. Everything was against them, or so she told herself. She tried to manage him as she’d managed other men, by remaining separate and asking no questions, but then she had never had a relationship of this length. Sooner or later you had to know more about the other person than was available through sex and observation and shared activity. So in time she found out that he was a consultant ophthalmologist at a London teaching hospital, that he had been married for twenty years (at the time, that would be twenty-three now) and that his wife was a GP. They had no children, but he had represented this without regret as an incidental circumstance, not the result of a decision. He was the son of second-generation Scottish Italians who used to run a café and sandwich bar in Glasgow, but his mother had died some years ago and his father had sold the business and now lived in sheltered accommodation, ‘wowing the old ladies’ as Robert put it.

  He had been christened Roberto, and had t
hree elder brothers whose names were Guido, Seppi, and Ricardo. Only Seppi was still called that, the other two had opted like him for anglicisation – Guy and Richard. Seppi was the one most like their father, a tough, careful grafter: he and his wife had a grown-up married daughter and grandchildren, and ran a successful baby-clothes shop in Edinburgh. Richard – smooth, smart and opportunistic – had married the scion of a fabulously rich furniture designer from Milan and returned to Italy where he’d since taken over the business. Guy was a twice-divorced professional musician, gifted but shambolic, a clarinettist with the Northern Symphony Orchestra.

  It was these brothers, more than anything, that brought home to Stella the anomalies of her position in Robert’s life. It wasn’t too much to say that he adored them, it was the one area of his life where he seemed more Italian than Scot. She envied them their tribal closeness, their easy, undeserving claim on his love, and bitterly resented the fact that as far as they were concerned she herself did not exist. She was a whole part of their beloved brother’s life, and his nature, of which they were kept in ignorance. She was sure they admired his success, which would of course include his sound marriage to an estimable wife, but what of her, his passion, his addiction, the person he said he could not live without? The performer in her felt starved of the attention she deserved.

  Seppi was the only one Robert saw with any regularity, and that not often. Richard was in flight from his background and rarely made contact. As for Guy, Robert seemed to find him droll, especially his disorganised emotional life, an attitude which under the circumstances she found patronising.

  It was this that prompted her to say, in bed late one night: ‘I don’t see why he’s such a big disaster.’

  ‘I never said he was a disaster, he just can’t cut the mustard, romantically speaking.’

  ‘And what exactly constitutes cutting the mustard?’

  Her head was on his shoulder and she felt him look down at her before replying: ‘Forming a relationship. I know what you’re going to say.’

  ‘We’re hardly in a position to criticise.’