by Sarah Rayne
But even more than sex, Pippa has used the bed for sleeping. Since she started spending her meagre free time at his flat, Xavier has become fully aware of how tired Pippa is, how much sleep she has missed. It’s a debt accrued over the past five years and now stacking up interest faster than it can be paid off. Even when she does get a decent sleep, it only seems to remind her system of what it is properly entitled to, and it raises its demands accordingly. Xavier is getting better at persuading Pippa to rest properly between jobs, to take naps and lie-downs, to let him make her tea and toast, even to overlook small messes and imperfections.
‘I’m not an invalid.’
‘You will be if you continue like this, that’s the point.’
In commanding Pippa’s time, Xavier has two big opponents: her tendency to take on too much work, and her loyalty to Wendy. To tackle either subject feels as precarious as walking on marbles. The sister he will leave until he’s collected more evidence, but the workload he has started to address, albeit tentatively, opening talks a few days ago in a café down the road.
‘Look, you’ve got to let me . . . let me take some of the pressure off you a bit.’
‘I have to work, Xavier. What, I’m just meant to let you pay bills for me? Do you think I’ve no pride?’ Her blue eyes swoop down to look at the table.
She is serious enough about her pride for this to be a risky subject, but he still persists, even though money was one of the factors that caused that awful argument that awful night.
‘I’m not saying you should . . . sponge. I’m saying let’s be practical. I’ve got some money. You don’t have much. You are wearing yourself out and in the long run it’ll cost you more work because you’ll be—’
‘So what are you suggesting? Next time I could earn twenty-five quid I just ask you for twenty-five quid instead?’
‘No . . .’
‘Or you pay me to hang out with you?’
‘No. Just . . . oh, I don’t know. Maybe just let me do nice things for you, sometimes, without complaining.’
‘I’m letting you take me for tea, aren’t I? In a café.’ She shakes her head. ‘My mother would never forgive me. “Going out to a café! What do you think I buy teabags for!”’
She did let him buy her a coat: a beautiful, floor-length, green floral affair – thick, almost a cloak – which she had spotted in a shop in Soho almost six months ago.
‘Every time I go past my heart stops in case it’s not there any more. I know it’s stupid.’
Xavier went straight in and paid for it.
‘That’s that sorted. It would be a shame if you had heart failure over a coat.’
She blushed and thanked him, and kissed him on the mouth.
Last week, to cheer her up after a trying day, he bought her a box of chocolates. They go to the pictures, eat Chinese food, go for walks. They speak on the phone two or three or four times a day. In a couple of weeks he plans to buy her a new dress and take her to an art exhibition with a posh drinks reception beforehand.
He can remember how recently it seemed absurd to refer even privately to ‘taking her’ somewhere. He’s not sure whether she has softened a little, or whether he’s simply got bolder.
Tonight he watches her sleeping face, the eyelids that dropped down like sliding garage doors almost the instant she got into bed, the expression of absolute seriousness. Earlier, they played Scrabble.
The old green box caught Pippa’s eye as she rummaged through a cupboard.
‘Hey, why don’t we play this?’
Xavier, glass of wine in hand, glanced up from the TV and cocked an eyebrow.
‘Are we that desperate?’
‘Shut up. I like Scrabble.’
‘I don’t think you’ll like playing it with me.’
‘Oh really? And why not?’ She was already getting the board out of its box.
‘Because I’m a tournament-standard player.’
‘Oh are you!’ She shook the velvet bag and mockingly ruffled his hair. ‘Well, I used to be the UK’s best young discus thrower but I don’t wear a bloody rosette for it, do I!’
Sure enough he infuriated her, with 58 points for JA, JAR, AA and AR in one move.
‘You can’t have those! They’re not words!’
Xavier reached into the box and casually removed a beaten-up little book.
‘Fortunately, I keep a Scrabble dictionary for just this sort of debate.’
‘JA is a German word!’
‘If you look in this dictionary, it’s also an English word.’
‘AA . . .?’
‘It’s a type of lava, with a rough surface.’
‘So how am I supposed to win,’ she asked a bit later, ‘now you’re this far ahead’ – counting on her fingers – ‘and I’ve got shitty little letters and I know you’ve got good ones because of the way you’re smirking?’
‘You’re not supposed to win. I’m supposed to win. I did tell you this when we started.’
She poured herself another glass of wine.
‘You’re not having one.’
‘If you really want my advice,’ Xavier continued, ‘you need to either hit back with a Z- or X-type word of your own—’
‘Which I can’t as I don’t have a Z or an X.’
‘Never reveal your tiles. Or, get rid of all seven, get a Bingo, get a 50-point bonus. That’d put you . . .’ He scanned the meticulous column of pencilled figures in front of him. ‘Well, within 120.’
Pippa elbowed him, fairly hard.
‘Very short words and very long ones, that’s all Scrabble is about. The rest is just filler. Do you realize that when you play-fight, it is as painful as real fighting?’
‘Of course I realize.’
‘So all in all, I’d advise you to swap tiles.’
‘But then I miss a go.’
‘It’s not missing a go. The swap is a move in itself. Sometimes a risk is the only way.’
Xavier listened to the gentle clicking of the tiles against one another as she rummaged in the bag with a resigned groan. He wondered how Pippa would react when he put down DZO, a hybrid of cow and yak most commonly found in Tibet.
The following Friday, Xavier takes Pippa to a movie and then to a classy restaurant, where they drink two bottles of wine. Occasionally, Pippa laughs so loudly that people on adjoining tables, heads bowed over leather-bound menus like delegates examining the minutes of a meeting, look up peevishly from their deliberations. They walk dizzily home from the tube station, hand in hand, tracing loose diagonals up Bayham Road. Pippa, repeating herself, talking around in circles, and counting lists down on her fingers, outlines her objections to the film’s intricate plot.
‘And how would he even afford a gym membership, a bloke who works delivering pizzas? How is he going to get the money to ponce about in some fancy place with running machines?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he stole it.’
‘So what’re you going to say in your review? Two stars?’
‘Three, I think.’
She punches his forearm.
‘It’s not worth three stars.’
‘It is. It was competently done. There were some good bits.’
‘Are you going to discuss it on your radio show?’ She puts on the haughty voice she uses for undermining him. ‘Are you going to make amusing remarks about it with your friend Murray?’
The mention of Murray’s name provokes misgivings, the precise shape of which Xavier cannot trace.
‘How is the show going, anyway?’
‘You should know. You’re one of our valued listeners.’
‘I normally fall asleep before the end of it.’
He returns her punch on the arm.
‘The show is fine, thank you, to answer your question.’
Murray has been bright enough on the show, but the atmosphere between the two of them is still somehow clenched and uneasy. In commercial breaks and during the weather, they make little conversation. Xavier looks out at th
e empty car park and Murray tugs and twists handfuls of his bushy hair.
Just before the 2 a.m. midpoint of last night’s show, Murray remarked, ‘No sign of that guy recently.’
‘Which guy?’
‘That miserable bugger who was always cer, cer, cer, cer, calling in.’
‘Clive?’
‘Yeah. The guy with the wives.’
‘The guy without the wives,’ Xavier murmured. ‘No. He’s been quiet.’
‘Probably for the best.’ Murray uncrossed his legs, scratched his left testicle with a thick finger, and grimaced. ‘He was pretty much a cul-de-sac.’
‘Mmm.’ Xavier raised an eyebrow and let the subject run out of air in the warm room.
Now, with Pippa’s hand in his, he lets Murray disappear in similar fashion from his mind.
Even during sex she’s in the mood for mockery.
‘Dear Xavier, please sort me life out. Dear Xavier, I can’t live without you.’
‘This is not an appropriate time . . .’ Xavier’s hands, sweat-slick, clutch her sides. ‘This is not an appropriate time to question my professional standing.’
‘Dear Xavier. I am currently having sex with you and want to know what you would like me to do next.’
Because of his longtime habit of keeping peculiar hours, Xavier normally finds himself awake for some time after Pippa has fallen asleep, which she seems always to do immediately after sex. Tonight, as on previous nights, he watches her face and gently strokes her arm, admiring the freckles shown in a soft light from the full moon outside. Her breaths are slow, each exhalation a little longer than Xavier expects.
He’s been asleep for only a few minutes when they both sit straight up in response to a resounding crash from upstairs.
‘What is it, what is it!’ mutters Pippa, still half-asleep.
He grabs her hand and threads his fingers between hers.
‘It’s all right. It’s just . . . upstairs.’
She leans across and puts on the bedside light. They sit, holding a joint breath. From the other side of the ceiling come raised voices, which Xavier and Pippa can’t help but hear, like the overspill from the film in the next auditorium. Tamara’s furious shrieks are countered by the nasal yelling of her boyfriend. There is a series of thumps, cries, another crash, and finally silence. Downstairs, Jamie wails; Mel can be heard hauling herself wearily out of bed and to his side. The silence continues. Xavier feels as though everyone in London must be listening as breathlessly as they are; but no, nobody else is aware of what is happening. The knowledge is suddenly frightening. Xavier still has hold of Pippa’s hand. He remembers shouting for his mother after a nightmare, eight years old, on holiday in the outback. ‘It’s all right now!’ she said, as his arms trawled the sheets frantically for imaginary snakes. ‘They’ve gone now! I mean, they were never here!’ she corrected herself.
Just when the silence seems as if it will swallow up whatever events it succeeded, the door of Tamara’s flat can be heard swinging open violently, followed by a further exchange of shouts.
‘Let’s go up there.’ Pippa’s pale blue eyes shine in the dark.
‘What?’
‘Let’s go up there and see if we can help.’
‘But—’
‘Something’s not right, Xavier.’
Xavier starts to protest again, but then remembers the row they had about this before. Pippa is already halfway to the front door. She has on a long T-shirt from an old athletics event, and knickers; she never sleeps naked. ‘You can’t,’ she explained to Xavier, after they slept together in his bed for the first time. ‘You never know what might happen.’ Now, he thinks wryly, fumbling in drawers for something to wear, she’s been proved right. He follows her out onto the landing where the two of them, half-dressed, watch Tamara’s boyfriend come clumping down the stairs, a bag over his shoulder and his shirt, as Xavier’s mum would say, ‘buttoned all wrong’. He eyes them both.
Xavier looks back at him. He has a purple bruise by his eye, which his hand leaps too late to cover. There’s an older cut on his lower lip. Xavier draws a long, shaky breath and feels his stomach plunge.
‘Are you all right?’ Pippa asks the man rather weakly.
He looks at Pippa, seems to consider saying something aggressive, and then decides against it.
‘Oh, I’m fine, I’m fine!’ he contents himself with saying, the bitterness in his voice leaving both of them somewhat at a loss. ‘Nice of you to ask, finally!’
Xavier coughs.
Pippa asks, ‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, could you not at some point have come up to see what was going on? Could you not have taken some sort of interest?’
‘We did take an interest,’ Pippa begins.
‘It’s me, not her,’ Xavier objects. ‘She doesn’t live here. It’s me that lives here.’
‘Well, all I can say is it would have been nice to have had some support,’ says the man rather incoherently; it’s not clear if he quite knows what he means. ‘It would have been nice to have had someone come and say: what’s going on here? Then maybe it wouldn’t have been quite so easy for her to smack me around. What do you think?’
Xavier and Pippa stand dumbly, not looking at him or at each another.
‘Yes, I know what you’re thinking,’ the man continues, ‘so why did I keep going back? Because I’m a stupid fucking . . . because I love her. Well, I won’t make that mistake again! I’ll find someone who doesn’t smack me in the fucking face!’
Xavier and Pippa watch him take the rest of the stairs in inefficient strides. He throws open the front door, which admits a puff of cold air in the hall below. Instinctively they both gaze up the stairs in case there is a glimpse of Tamara, but there is nothing to see, and nothing to hear, just the heaviest of silences, and the diminishing whimpers of the pacified Jamie in the ground-floor flat.
The next morning Pippa leaves early – she wants to go home and check on Wendy before her first cleaning job. The events of the night hang damply on their conversations; Pippa seems distracted as she kisses him goodbye. Xavier can’t concentrate as he tries to prepare the show. He replays in his mind the many times, at least half a dozen over the past three months, that there have been noises from upstairs. Could it all have been avoided? It’s no longer satisfying to console himself with the thought that things just take their course.
Jamie is in a fractious mood – if he has any other moods – and splinters the air with an angry howl as Xavier collects the post from outside and knocks on the door. Mel looks as if she hasn’t slept at all, and he notices how thin she’s become; her jumper hangs roomily around her shoulders.
‘What happened last night?’
Xavier glances sheepishly back up the stairs, as if the situation were still unfolding up there.
‘The lady . . . Tamara’s boyfriend stormed out. They’d had a fight . . . I mean, an actual fight—’
‘BE CAREFUL, JAMIE. Sorry? An actual fight? He’d hit her?’
‘She . . . she’d hit him.’
‘God.’
‘I think it must have been happening for a while.’ Xavier clears his throat.
‘God,’ says Mel again. ‘Do you think we should, you know, report . . .’
He’s about to reply when Jamie darts past her legs and comes out into the hall, targeting Xavier’s knees with his toy fire engine. He strikes Xavier an accurate blow on the kneecap with the little emergency vehicle, whose painted-on driver smirks as Xavier cries out.
‘Shit,’ Mel mutters to herself. ‘Jamie, get back here. Oh, I’m so sorry. I’m . . . he’s just so full of energy . . .’
Mel clasps her forehead miserably.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine. You must think I’m always ill. Just a bit of a migraine. You must think I’m a . . .’ She smiles ruefully, her face off-white. ‘Sorry.’
‘Would you like me to take him out?’ Xavier hears himself ask.
‘
Take . . .? Take Jamie?’
‘Just to give you a break. I could just take him down the woodland walk for an hour or something. If you wanted.’
Even as he’s saying this, he hopes the offer will be declined. You’re not to be trusted, says a voice at the back of Xavier’s brain. Remember Michael, remember what you did? But he pushes this away fiercely.
Mel crouches down next to Jamie.
‘Would you like to go for a walk with Xavier?’
Jamie nods.
‘Are you sure you’ll be good?’
He nods, tight-lipped, eyes reproachful, as though the question does him a disservice.
‘You won’t be naughty and you won’t run away from Xavier?’
Jamie shakes his head of floppy fair hair, still with an expression of mild surprise that such questions should be asked.
He turns to look at Xavier.
‘Can Valentine come?’
‘Valentine is his rabbit,’ Mel explains. Jamie holds out a grubby white toy to Xavier, like someone declaring an item at Customs. Xavier gravely inspects the proposed passenger.
‘Will Valentine be good as well?’
Jamie consults briefly with Valentine.
‘Yes.’
‘Then let’s go.’
‘Thank you so much,’ says Mel. ‘Are you absolutely sure?’
Well, it’s a bit late to go back now, Xavier thinks as he takes Jamie’s hand. They walk along the narrow stretch of pavement at the bottom end of Bayham Road, where cars pick up dangerous speed. When they’ve crossed the road, Xavier gingerly releases Jamie’s hand, and allows the boy to totter in front of him along the canopied path through the woods. Birds chatter in the branches above them. It’s a greyish, fairly cool midweek morning. A huge red-brown dog, seemingly taking its owner for a walk rather than the other way around, lopes up to them and Jamie pats its head. The dog snuffles delightedly at Jamie, its glistening nose in his palm. The owner exchanges an amused look with Xavier as they wait for their respective charges. Xavier realizes that anyone passing would take him for Jamie’s father.