The plan worked like a dream. Free of domestic expenses – the gas, electricity, council tax, water and groceries — I saved over £400 a month. It’s important to have some independence in a marriage and Em’s not the kind of person to go looking at my bank statements (which I keep locked in a filing cabinet, just in case). But if she had looked she’d have seen not the usual fluctuations but steady growth. By the end of June, my account stood at £2,518.23.
Then the trouble broke at school. It’s no excuse but when people are stressed they sometimes relapse. Not that I thought of it as a relapse at the time. The plan made sense. We had exceeded our monthly target, so where was the harm in rounding down the sum in my account and gambling the rest? The sum was modest, a mere £118.23. If I blew it, nothing was lost; if I got lucky, we could use the winnings for a holiday. I felt elated to renew old friendships: Mister Wheel, Mrs Fruit, Master Poker and Miss Slot. And to begin with I was — which you can be, believe me — a prudent gambler. Through skill and guile, I was up £500. But then my winnings went, through unbelievable bad luck, in less than fifteen minutes, late at night. In the old days I’d have had to wait till the banks opened before I could resume. It’s not like that now, thanks to credit cards, debit cards and the Internet. Four hundred pounds, a month’s savings, which I could soon make up, seemed a reasonable extra outlay. I had no intention of gambling the other £2,000. But. What more can I say? You know the rest.
Frankly, I despise myself at times.
If I tell you that by late August my debts stood at £9,700, I am of course including the £3,200 towards IVF treatment that would and should have been in my savings account by then: on paper, my various overdrafts and IOUs amounted to only £6,500. That still sounds a lot to you, I dare say. It does to me, too. But there are always people out there who’ll lend you money, at a price. I’d been thinking of resorting to them but thanks to Ollie’s impulsive bet I now didn’t need to: £10,000 was in my grasp. The neatness of it — down to the £300 surplus I could gamble with — seemed preordained.
Perhaps then you can understand why, despite the shame and guilt swirling through me that Sunday evening, I also felt optimistic. 1—1, with tennis to come, and Ollie the better player, didn’t look promising. But since we’d first agreed to the bet, several things had changed. First, if Ollie was dying he wouldn’t need my money. Second, even if his tumour was benign, Daisy might decide to leave him and if she did, and we were living together, she would settle the debt for me. Third, more immediately, Ollie was drinking heavily: at this rate, he’d be in no condition to compete.
I had those three reasons to feel hopeful, plus one more. If Ollie won, he would be too much of a gentleman to insist I pay him; and if he lost, he would be too much of a gentleman to wriggle out of paying me. Till the weekend, I’d feared losing everything — my house, car, computer, job and wife. Now I stood to secure them again. With luck I might even upgrade them.
I left the Indian Pearl with two large brown bags, goo soaking through the bottom. Though the roads were still wet, the sky had cleared to the west, and behind, in the wing mirror, the dusk turned from salmon to tangerine. Daisy was sleeping, or pretending to, as she had on the way, her hunched body turned towards the nearside window. I knew she had come reluctantly, at Ollie’s insistence, because — stupidly jealous as he now was — he didn’t want her being around Milo in the kitchen; since she’d got in the car, we’d barely spoken. I felt cheerful, nonetheless, as if restored to her favour. Whether as a friend, lover or future husband didn’t matter so long as I was somewhere in her life.
The rain began again as we left the main road, sloshing across then pounding at the windscreen — like the rinse cycle of a washing machine. I turned my headlights on and upped the tempo of the wipers, to no effect. The road became a river, the banks either side our only guide. I could imagine the engine dying and a tide rising high between the hedges, the car surfing over them on the crest of a bore and riding out through the meadows to the sea. Love for Daisy flooded through me. I felt elated rather than scared.
She sat up. The Indian meal had steamed up the windows and she rubbed her sleeve to make a porthole.
‘Ollie told me about his tumour,’ I said, sensing cancer was a safer topic than love.
It was a while before she responded. ‘The consultant thinks it’s benign.’
‘Why did Ollie tell me he was dying, then?’
‘You know what he’s like. Without a certain level of hysteria, he can’t function. Tension energises him and panic keeps him sane.’
‘Telling people you’re dying when you’re healthy isn’t sane.’
‘He believes it. He really does. I could sit him down with his X-rays and scans tonight and show him the prognosis is good, but tomorrow he would still be convinced he’s dying. It’s how he is. A hypochondriac and a stoic rolled into one.’
I kept my eyes on the road but sensed her looking at me. The coldness was melting.
‘He also told me you didn’t know,’ I said.
‘Of course I know. It was me who made him see a doctor in the first place, because he was getting headaches.’
‘So why did he say that?’
‘I’ve no idea. Are you sure that’s what he said?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘Maybe he thought it was the best way to stop the subject coming up — he hates talking about it.’
I slowed the car. Though I feared upsetting Daisy, I couldn’t hide my dismay with Ollie.
‘First he tells me he’s dying when he’s not,’ I said. ‘Then he tells me you don’t know when you do. I think he enjoys telling lies. That story of staying at the farmhouse in 1976 is obviously bollocks too.’
‘They did stay, I’m sure of it. Ollie has photos somewhere.’
‘And the MGB being his dad’s. And how he was head boy at school. And how he went to Sandhurst but then packed it in after a year.’
‘That’s right — he had some sort of breakdown. Of course it’s true. It’s all true. How can you even ask?’
‘And his father drowning. He told me that this evening. I’d never heard the story before.’
‘Don’t be daft. He told you at university. Don’t you remember the three of us discussing it? He certainly told me.’
Her gaze briefly fixed on me then swung away, like a lighthouse beam. Despite her anger, we were getting on again. Why couldn’t she see we were meant to be together?
‘You’ve such a weird take on Ollie,’ she said, still protective despite no longer loving him. ‘When you talk about him, it’s as if he’s someone else. Can’t you see he’s going through a bad patch? It’s why he asked you for the weekend.’
‘So it was his idea, not yours?’
‘Don’t be so touchy, Ian. I hoped it would take his mind off things. I remember how it was at university. The two of you were inseparable.’
‘It was you he wanted to be with, not me.’
‘We were a trio.’
‘You were a couple. I was the hanger-on.’
‘I’m the one who used to feel left out,’ she said, leaning forward to clear the windscreen again. ‘I still do sometimes. Em, too, I expect. We sit on the sidelines while you two go off.’
‘Em enjoys your company.’
‘Em makes me feel trivial. When I listen to her talking about her work, mine seems so pointless.’
‘She respects what you do. We both do. Seriously.’
Seriously not. But I felt sorry for Daisy — something I’d rarely done before.
Over the last mile, the rain eased off and the river road dwindled to a stream. As we puttered like a barge along the drive towards the farmhouse, Daisy said: ‘I’m sorry for what I said on the beach. Last night should never have happened. But I know you must have been drunk. We both were. And I do still want us to be friends.’
If she had apologised earlier, I wouldn’t have suspected her and Milo. Nor would Ollie have got the wrong idea about them.
‘Daisy,’
I said, parking the car and cutting the engine.
‘What?’ she said.
‘There’s something …’
I reached for her hand but she was too quick for me. She’d already opened the door and was stretching for the paper bags on the back seat.
‘What?’ she repeated, impatiently, when all I wanted was to warn her of Ollie’s suspicions.
‘Never mind,’ I said.
Daisy was right about Ollie’s hypochondria. It seemed an odd affliction, in someone so physically strong. And for a time at university I failed to see it, because he worked so hard to appear tough. For instance, one Saturday during the second year he was badly trampled in a rugby maul and came home with a black eye, swollen lips and bruised cheekbones. Not once did he complain. When he groaned through the bedroom wall that night, his injuries weren’t the cause, but Daisy.
Minor ailments could send him into a panic, though. Was that mole on his body cancerous? Could the temperature he was running be due to Lassa fever, rather than flu? And he didn’t just worry on his own behalf. One night we were eating together at the house — a rare evening without Daisy. He had cooked us both steaks. They were meant to be fillet steaks but mine was tough — no doubt the butcher, taking Ollie for a clueless toff, had palmed him off with a cheaper cut. A lump of meat stuck in my gullet. This wasn’t the first time such a thing had happened and I knew the only remedy was to wait: the gathering saliva made breathing a struggle but there was no danger of me choking to death. It was Ollie who panicked. He thought the meat must be obstructing my windpipe and dialled 999. A manic phone call ensued, with him demanding that an ambulance be sent and me protesting it was unnecessary. When the operator hung up, thoroughly confused, Ollie dragged me outside, intent on driving me to hospital himself. By then his hysteria had begun to affect me: I was panicking and gasping for breath. But as the night air hit us on the doorstep, the steak-lump suddenly loosened and slipped down.
He’d been a good friend that night. But perhaps at some level he was also willing me to die, so as to re-enact the defining trauma of his childhood: as I struggled for breath, my mouth filling with salty fluid, I must have reminded him of his father drowning. That’s if the story of the drowning was true, of course. As I sat in the car outside the farmhouse, with Daisy’s words still ringing in my head ('Of course it’s true. It’s all true'), I tried to persuade myself it must be.
Ollie was my oldest friend, the brother I’d never had: why doubt him? But my faith was weak. He had lied to me too many times. If I trusted him, I’d be at risk. He might even destroy me.
‘Dessert wine?’ said Ollie, who had meanwhile opened another red.
‘Not for me,’ Milo said.
Rather than eat in the poky dining room, we’d dragged the metal table in from the terrace, and were sitting by the living-room windows watching the rain. The ruins of the Indian takeaway lay before us — spilled rice grains, torn-off ears of nan, silver trays with saffron-orange sauce. Em sat opposite me, with Daisy facing Milo, and Ollie at the head of the table. Natalie and Bethany were sound asleep and, washout though it must have been, Archie was still at his gig. All was peaceful.
Except Ollie, who, having dozed during the meal, had now sprung to life again, full of mischief.
‘Don’t be feeble,’ he said, filling Milo’s glass.
‘Whoa. I’m not much of a drinker. It goes to my head.’
‘That’s why you need it. It’ll inspire you. You’re an artist.’
‘I trained as an artist. Now I barely get time for my own stuff.’
‘That’s not true,’ Daisy said, turning to Em. ‘You should see his work. It’s wonderful.’
I avoided Em’s eye, knowing she hates gushiness as much as I do. We don’t hold with enthusiasm in Ilkeston.
‘I’m sure Milo’s a genius,’ Ollie said. ‘But drink will raise him to even greater heights.’
‘Shut up, Ollie,’ Daisy said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. When have you ever taken an interest in art?’
‘I go to openings with you. I see the portfolios you bring home. If Milo’s art is something I’d enjoy, here’s to him.’
Ollie smiled and clinked glasses with everyone.
‘I’m not sure you would enjoy it, if you like figurative stuff,’ Milo said. ‘To me figurative art is about duplicating, and I don’t see the point. The world exists already — why copy it?’
‘But that’s what people want, isn’t it?’ Ollie said. I nodded in agreement. ‘For artists to portray things they can recognise.’
‘To me that’s no better than ventriloquism. Here’s a voice we know. Here’s a landscape we know. And here’s a copy. What a dull mechanical exercise! Art should be something more.’
‘OK,’ Ollie said, ‘you’re not figurative. But I assume you could be, if you chose. I mean, if we asked you to do a sketch of the five of us sitting round this table, you could knock one off.’
‘I don’t know about knock off …’
‘Call it what you like, if we gave you a pencil and paper you could draw us, right? And any sketch you came up with would be markedly better than anything the rest of us could come up with?’
‘It’s not the way I work.’
‘Come on,’ Ollie said. ‘You’re a professional artist and designer. Don’t tell me anything I did might be equally good. There must be a sketch pad round here somewhere. Let’s have a competition. We’ll take a sheet each and a pencil and all get cracking, then fold the finished sketches up and pass them round and see if we can guess which one is yours.’
‘Shut up, Ollie,’ Daisy said, ‘you’re being a pain.’
‘It’s a bit of fun. So Milo can prove a point.’
‘He doesn’t need to,’ Daisy said. ‘He’s saying that representational accuracy isn’t the way to judge art. I agree.’
Were they playing footsie? Was his hand on her knee? I knew that Ollie must have his suspicions.
‘Unless Milo can do the figurative stuff,’ he said, ‘why should we trust the rest?’
‘It’s not a matter of trust.’
‘But how can I judge it when I don’t know what I’m looking at?’
‘Take no notice, Milo. When Ollie’s had a drink or two he likes to argue. It’s his training as a barrister.’
‘Exactly my point, sweetie. Because I trained as a lawyer, I’ve the knowledge and skills to practise as a professional. That’s what people pay me for, because they know what they’re getting. Whereas —’
‘Whereas people pay me because they don’t know what they’re getting,’ Milo said. ‘I’d be a failure otherwise. It’s like Matisse — when his Russian patron commissioned him to do a painting of a blue room, he did it in red.’
‘So much for the patron.’
‘The patron was delighted. Even if he hadn’t been, the painting was a triumph. It’s not the job of an artist to make people feel comfortable. They’re comfortable enough already.’
‘Do you think the people I represent are comfortable?’ Ollie said. ‘The man falsely accused of murder? Or the girl raped by some thug?’
‘Of course not,’ Milo said, suddenly sheepish. ‘Your work must be very distressing at times.’
‘Don’t apologise,’ Daisy said. ‘Ollie loves playing the gladiator.’
‘It’s not about play,’ Ollie said.
‘Art is, though. I think that’s the nature of our disagreement,’ Milo said, smiling and leaning back in his chair. ‘You’re demanding the same earnestness from my work that you bring to yours. There’s your error — art should be fun.’
Ollie, sipping his wine, seemed chastened, vanquished, stuck for words. But as Daisy stood up to ask who wanted coffee and who herb tea, he said: ‘It certainly seems to give you and Daisy a lot of fun.’
‘Sorry?’ Milo said.
‘I barely see Daisy these days. And when I do it’s Milo this and Milo that all day long.’
‘You’re being ridiculous,’ Daisy said, embarr
assed at being caught out or at Ollie making a spectacle of himself. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘I’ll clear these,’ Em said.
‘I need a pee,’ Milo said.
I put my hand over the glass as Ollie tried to pour me dessert wine but consented to the red. He filled his own glass at the same time, then half emptied it in one swig. Marooned at the head of the table, he looked lost, as if — with only me there — the purpose of the evening had slipped away. Female murmurs came from the kitchen where Daisy would be complaining that Ollie was impossible and Em consoling her that all men were as bad.
‘Take it easy, Ollie,’ I said, as he swigged again. ‘That wasn’t funny. It’s too near the bone.’
‘Ah. So you admit something is going on.’
‘His wife has just left him. He’s feeling vulnerable. It’s no time for jokes.’
‘It wasn’t a joke. I know now. I’ve seen.’
‘Seen what?’
‘The tissues. With dried sperm on them. In the waste bin.’
‘No, Ollie,’ I said.
‘Just like your dream.’
‘No, you mustn’t think —’
But before I could disabuse him Milo was back.
‘That was quick,’ Ollie said. ‘Prostate in good order, then.’
He seemed set to renew his attack. Perhaps literally: the knives we’d been using were steak knives, sharp enough to penetrate a heart. I’d never known Ollie be violent. But nor had I seen him so pissed and self-deluding. The prostate reference showed how he was thinking: he’d be onto Milo’s penis next and where he might have inserted it. I readied myself for mayhem. But for once my good counsel prevailed.
‘More red?’ was all he said, backing off.
Relaxing, relieved, as if he’d imagined the earlier insinuation, Milo smiled and shook his head.
‘I should get to bed. The girls wake up early.’
The Last Weekend Page 21