‘Mandy, that was just … fantastic!’
‘The best ever – honestly. I’m so glad to have you back.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, these last few weeks, I simply couldn’t get through to you. It was like you were living in a different world.’
‘I was – the world of fear. It is another planet, where all the usual pleasures and distractions mean nothing any more.’
‘And you mean to say that fear’s completely gone now?’
He laughed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that! Let’s put it this way – after I’ve made love to you, I feel so incredibly brave, I could apply for my pilot’s licence and still not turn a hair!’
‘In that case, we’d better do it on the plane – join the Five-Mile-High Club!’
‘No problem. I won’t need an invitation.’ He stroked her breasts, noticing how full they’d become; larger now and weighty, as he cupped them in his hands. He loved to imagine her breast-feeding – a real turn-on in itself. Because of Christine’s mastitis, he had never seen his daughter breastfed, but, when it came to this new baby, he was eager to be part of the whole ritual; maybe pleasuring one breast himself, while—
‘Good God!’ he exclaimed; all erotic images instantly dispelled by the sound of a key turning in the lock. ‘Someone’s coming in to the flat!’
Mandy leapt off the sofa, making a grab for her shirt. ‘Stay here!’ she hissed, as she rushed out to the front door.
He froze in shock. Who in heaven’s name would have a key? The caretaker? The landlord? No. Neither would let himself in, without checking it was convenient – least of all so late. He could hear a man’s deep voice. Oliver, he thought! Had the bastard turned up unannounced, thinking Mandy was alone? If so, she was conversing with him clad only in a skimpy shirt.
He listened in a paralysis of jealousy and indecision, then realized she was speaking in a frightened and defensive way, with no trace of the flirtatious tone she had been using on the phone. It must be someone else – perhaps a previous tenant, who’d retained his key for some peculiar reason. Or maybe an out-and-out crook, who’d deliberately had a key cut, so he could come and case the joint. If Mandy were being threatened, or was in any sort of danger, he must act – immediately.
Naked as he was, he hurtled out to defend her, stopping in his tracks at the sight of a tall, rangy bloke, dashingly dark and stylishly dressed in a black leather jacket and obscenely tight black jeans – decidedly not a hitman or a thug.
The man swivelled round to look at him, his expression darkening in fury. Then, wheeling back to Mandy, he all but spat at her, ‘So this is why you don’t want me to come in! What the fuck’s going on, you promiscuous slut?’
Eric faced the guy head-on, determined to protect Mandy from such appalling rudeness. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? Get out – this instant! Mandy’s my fiancée and I won’t stand for her being insulted like this.’
‘Oh, so you’re engaged now, are you?’ the bloke said, with a sneer, ignoring Eric completely, as he turned again to Mandy. ‘Well, congratulations on finding another father for your baby! Though it’s a pity you didn’t tell me. I could have saved myself a journey.’
‘Yes, I … I thought you were in Haiti,’ Mandy stuttered. Her face was deathly pale, and she was cowering against the wall.
‘I was in Haiti, but I came back earlier than planned – and just as well, it seems, otherwise I’d never have known what you get up to behind my back. I was fool enough to imagine I could trust you. You see, the reason I returned was to tell you I’d be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But my first instincts were obviously right, you two-faced slag!’
‘How dare you speak to Mandy like that?’ Eric cried, outraged. ‘And what the hell d’you mean about her finding another father for her baby? I’m the father, I’ll have you know!’
The guy gave a mocking laugh. ‘So now we have three poor saps, all with a claim to paternity. Well, that’s news to me, I must say! Mandy was forced to admit I might be one of two, but I didn’t realize she’d deceived me twice.’
‘For God’s sake, Brad,’ Mandy said, suddenly springing to her own defence. ‘You said you didn’t want a child. Well, Eric does. So leave him alone, you bastard!
‘Mandy,’ Eric said, with an icy calmness that belied his racing heart. ‘Who is this guy? And what’s going on?’
‘Yes, maybe it’s time for some introductions,’ the guy said, with a grim smile. ‘You’re Eric, so I gather. I’m Brad – Brad Sunderland. Though I doubt if Mandy would have mentioned me – not if she was hoping to pass you off as the baby’s father.’
‘I am the baby’s father,’ Eric repeated. He would say it over and over; keep reiterating it all damned night, if necessary, until this jerk realized it was true.
‘Can you prove it?’
Eric hesitated, embarrassed to be discussing his sex-life with a stranger. ‘Do you really need all the intimate details?’
‘Yes, I think I do in the circumstances.’
‘Well,’ said Eric, flushing, ‘I … I had unprotected sex with Mandy on New Year’s Eve. A month later, she took a pregnancy test and found she’d conceived that very night.’
‘Amazing!’ Brad jeered. ‘There’s just something you don’t know, you poor mug. Mandy told me she was pregnant two whole weeks before that. And, yes, she had a pregnancy test, but that initial one – I remember it distinctly – was done on December the fifteenth.’
Eric steadied himself against the wall. He hadn’t even known Mandy on 15 December. This couldn’t be happening; must be some sort of nightmare. ‘So … so, if you’re the father, why did you abandon Mandy, piss off to Haiti and leave her on her own?’
‘It wasn’t a question of “pissing off”,’ Brad retorted. ‘I happen to be a photographer and a work assignment came up in Haiti – a much longer job than my usual sort of thing: four months’ travelling the country, recording voodoo rituals and suchlike. And I have to say I was bloody glad to accept, so I could get the hell out of England and leave the whole mess behind. You see, Mandy here is quite the little schemer. Mind you, it took me a while to twig, because although we’ve been together three years, we’ve never shared a pad. I value my independence, so I’ve always kept my own place – a flat in Clerkenwell, which doubles as a—’
‘Never mind your living arrangements,’ Eric interrupted. ‘I’m totally confused by these allegations you’re throwing around. Could you start at the beginning and fill me in, OK?’
‘No!’ Mandy pleaded. ‘Eric doesn’t want to hear this stuff.’
‘The poor sod ought to hear it, since you’ve dumped him in the shit.’
Poor mug. Poor sod. Eric bristled at the insults, yet still couldn’t quite believe what this odious man was saying. There must be some mistake. Or maybe the bloke was lying, for some reason of his own.
‘Perhaps we could sit down,’ Brad said, irritably, ‘I’ve had enough of standing around in a cramped and chilly hall.’
‘No,’ Mandy begged again, ‘I don’t want—’
Too late. Brad had already barged into the sitting-room and stood a moment surveying the scene; his face screwed up in an expression of disgust. Eric felt doubly mortified, realizing how sleazy it must look: sofa-cushions dumped on the floor; two discarded pairs of jeans, lying inside-out; his scarlet Y-fronts intimately entangled with Mandy’s black lace bra and pants. She was now frantically trying to cover herself; grabbing her jeans and dressing in desperate haste. No way would he get dressed – demean himself by fumbling with zips and buttons, while Brad looked on derisively. He already felt at a definite disadvantage; not only naked, but less distinguished in every way than this sleek and striking intruder. However, he seized the throw from the sofa and wrapped it round his body; wishing he could simply vanish from the earth.
Brad flung himself into a chair. ‘OK,’ he said in an acrimonious voice, ‘let me put you in the picture, Eric. Around the middle of Octobe
r, Mandy decides to come off the Pill, but she doesn’t bother to inform me of the fact. A month later, I find out, and, yes, I’m pretty bloody furious. She knows full well I don’t want kids. In my line of work, I’m forever on the move and I don’t fancy being tied down – or not yet, in any case. I mean, if a job comes up I like the sound of in, say, Bangkok or the Congo, I drop everything and go.’
Yes, of course you do, Eric muttered under his breath. A he-man and a jetsetter snaps his fingers at any sort of danger; doesn’t need chaperons and straitjackets and mega-supplies of Valium, just to get him through one puny flight.
‘Well, to cut a long story short, we had a flaming row and Mandy slammed out of the flat and went to some drunken party on her own. OK, we made it up, and she promised to go back on the Pill until I’d had more time to sort out what I felt about the whole business of a family. Then, exactly four weeks later, she tells me she’s pregnant with my kid. She just happened to conceive between stopping the Pill and restarting it. I was stunned, of course, but I did the decent thing – told her I’d pay for the kid and accept my responsibilities as father. I can’t say I was exactly delighted by the prospect, but I reckoned I could handle it – well, until one of my close friends told me he’d seen Mandy actually shagging some bloke at that famous party she went to on her own. They were having it off in one of the bedrooms, he said, where he’d gone himself, to crash out. It seems everyone was legless that night and, in fact, Mandy told me later she was so rat-arsed she hadn’t even known what she doing. Well, that was her excuse, but it didn’t change the fact that the baby she insisted was mine could just as well be his.’
‘Stop this!’ Mandy implored, now slumped on the sofa, with her head in her hands. ‘It’s nothing to do with Eric.’
‘It’s everything to do with him. You were already six weeks pregnant when you and he first screwed, so no way could this kid be his. Yet you were willing to deceive him – tell him a quite flagrant lie and think no one would find out.’
Eric drew the throw closer round his body, aware that he was shrinking – in size, in strength, in status. He had become a puny cuckold; a bare-arsed figure of fun; a poor mug; poor sap, poor sod.
‘Anyway,’ Brad continued, springing up from the chair again, in obvious agitation, ‘while I was in Haiti, I had time to mull things over and, once I’d simmered down a bit, I tried to see things from Mandy’s point of view. She’s five years older than me, and I knew she wanted kids, so maybe I’d failed to understand all that stuff about women’s biological clocks. And she did seem truly sorry about sleeping with the other bloke; said she’d only done it because she was so gutted by our quarrel, she just got pissed out of her mind and—’
Yes, thought Eric bitterly, remembering Mandy drinking at his birthday party; announcing her pregnancy in public, when they’d agreed to keep it secret; allowing her whole family to congratulate him on what he was forced to realize now was a completely fraudulent fatherhood.
‘And I don’t mind admitting I missed you.’ Brad had stopped by the sofa and was addressing her directly. In fact, giving her a sexy leer, Eric noticed with another surge of fury. All Brad had missed was the shags – that was bloody obvious.
‘So I thought “what the hell, why cut off my nose to spite my face?” I’ll do what I promised originally – accept the kid and pay for it, even if it’s not my own. But not now – no way – not after what I’ve seen tonight. I mean, for all I know, Eric may be one of a whole string of men you’ve been screwing here, when you thought I was three thousand miles away.’
A whole string of men. The phrase was like a punch in Eric’s face. Yes, what about that slimy Oliver? Was he another candidate for the hapless role of father?
‘Well, thank Christ I’ve stumbled on the truth before committing myself to umpteen years of childcare. I doubt we’ll ever know who the sodding father is, but at least it’s not my problem any more. I wash my hands of the whole damned thing – and that’s my final word, Mandy. I’ve seen you for what you are now – a lying, deceitful, scheming, little bitch!’
Mandy gave a cry and dashed towards the bedroom.
‘Hold on a minute!’ Brad said, intercepting her. ‘I shan’t be using this again!’ He hurled the door-key into her hands then turned on his heel and strode out, only pausing to shout, ‘‘Good luck, Eric! You’ll need it.’
chapter nineteen
Eric shuffled along the path. He had grown old in just the last two days – no longer a thrusting lover, a soon-to-be-new-father, but now a discarded piece of trash, like the stained and greasy McDonald’s cartons he’d seen flung down near the entrance to the park. Yet everything around him was young and in its prime: trees glazed with pollen or unfurling into new green leaf; daffodils exploding in full-throated golden triumph; clouds of blackthorn blossom frothing in bridal white. Pigeons were cooing and courting; other birds pairing up or busy building nests. He alone seemed solitary, surrounded as he was by lovers strolling hand-in-hand and family groups with little bands of kids. Clearly, mothers and grandmas had been coaxed out of doors, in droves, in honour of Mothering Sunday – a day he had always detested, when the whole damned land went gaga over mothers. Was his mother feeling disgruntled because she hadn’t received a lavish bunch of flowers? Well, if she’d only thought to get in touch forty years ago, she would have had lorryloads of flowers, by now, and he’d have been treating her to lunch today. Except he couldn’t bear her to see him in his present abject state: a failure, with no love-life and no future, destined to be on his own for ever.
He screwed up his eyes against the glare; resenting the sun for shining with such fervour; hating the baby-blue sky, simply for its colour. Maybe his mother had gone on to have a brood of other children and had simply written him off as an error of her youth. Was he crazy to have idealized her, when she could just as well be subnormal, stupid or criminally insane? He had never forgotten Rory, one of the kids at Grove End, who’d been removed from his mother when little more than a toddler, on account of her LSD addiction, and didn’t meet her again till the age of thirteen. Imagining she’d be totally cured and thrilled to have him back, the reality was cruel: he had come face to face with a ravaged old hag, who displayed no emotion whatever, beyond a sense of bafflement that her baby had grown up.
He was so deep in thought, he all but collided with an elderly woman and her equally ancient dog.
‘Excuse me, but do you have the time?’ she asked.
‘Yes, just coming up to half-past twelve.’ The strength of his voice surprised him. Shouldn’t it be a croak now; an old codger’s bronchitic wheeze? He was glad of the interruption, though, since it had roused him from his introspective brooding. Self-pity was quite odious and he had no right to inflict it on Stella, who’d been kind enough to invite him to lunch, knowing he’d always hated Sundays on his own and that, following Mandy’s bombshell, this particular Sunday would be hellish in the extreme.
He ambled to a stop beside the lake, where more kids were larking around; more young couples sitting entwined on the benches, kissing and embracing. Moving closer to the water’s edge, he watched a drake pursue a duck with merciless determination; bite its neck to hold it down underwater; then rape it, more or less. Sex in the animal kingdom seemed so short and unsatisfactory, if not downright violent; a total contrast to his long, tender nights with Mandy. New Year’s Eve had been the first and best, because so unexpected; so rapturously triumphant. Of course, now he realized that her sheer randiness and lust had been nothing more than a deliberate ploy to ensnare him. Her baby required a father – and required one pretty fast. She hadn’t time to select a better candidate, so she had set out to seduce him; apparently regardless of the fact she would then be forced to deceive him throughout his lifetime, and the child’s. His own personal Dewey Decimal system was now completely overturned, so that everything was wrongly filed: ‘love’ under ‘self-interest’; ‘passion’ under ‘calculation’; ‘trust’ under ‘duplicity’; ‘fatherhood’ und
er ‘cuckoldry’.
An eccentric-looking female, dressed in a summer frock and wellingtons, began feeding the birds with a whole, large farmhouse loaf. More and more avian hopefuls came flocking in, to grab their share of the spoils; geese and coots and tufted ducks paddling full-speed across the lake; gulls and pigeons swooping down from above. Soon, a cacophony broke out – honkings, squawkings and quackings, accompanied by angry flappings as one bird fought another or tried to drive it off. Eric surveyed the scene in silence, aware that it was an echo of the turmoil in his head: one emotion battling with another – love and desire for Mandy, followed by sheer loathing of her treachery; deep longing for the unborn child mixed with hatred for its every cell, because it had been fathered by some pick-up.
His mind drifted to Tom Jones, who had also been unfaithful; rogered a whole raft of women, yet, despite all the betrayals, still achieved his happy ending: marriage to Sophia. Was there any point in being loyal, he wondered, bitterly? Or maybe, unlike Tom, he was simply destined to lose the things that mattered. After all, the pattern had been set in childhood where no relationship ever lasted long. Each time he found a ‘mum’ or ‘home’, a modicum of love and safety, it had been snatched away and he’d been packed off somewhere else.
Aware that he was indulging in more nauseating self-pity, he turned his back on the birds and continued along the path until he reached the subtropical gardens. His attention was caught by a group of presumably vulnerable plants, swathed from top to bottom in straw and polythene, to protect them from the elements, and looking like Egyptian mummies standing upright in the flowerbed. He himself was in need of similar wrappings; thick and bulky bandages to bind his wounds; swaddle his raw feelings; cocoon him from the sharp winds of grief and loss. And they would be even more effective on the plane; shrouding his eyes and ears, so that he wouldn’t see any terrifying void opening up beneath him; hear any dangerous engine-noise, or the sounds of an impending crash. And those lengths of twine that girded the plants would tie him down securely in his seat, prevent him running amok or leaping up in panic every time the plane lurched.
Broken Places Page 23