Well Groomed

by Fiona Walker

  ‘My side?’ He tilted back his chair despondently, eyes raking the ceiling. ‘Jesus! I wasn’t aware that we were that divided now.’

  ‘Not side, exactly.’ Zoe blushed. ‘Sorry – bad choice of word. I was angry with her for doing a bunk from Scotland.’

  Niall stared at the ceiling in silence for a few moments. He looked as though he was praying.

  ‘I don’t blame her to be quite honest,’ he sighed, tipping the chair forward again and staring at Zoe’s cat brooch. ‘That’s a sweet wee thing, now.’

  ‘Why don’t you blame her?’

  He flipped a teaspoon over on the table and pressed his finger into its bowl.

  ‘I think I’ve made a big mistake, Zoe.’ He let the spoon go and rested his creased forehead in his palms.

  She froze, guessing he was about to confess to not wanting to marry Tash. She wasn’t at all certain that he should be telling her so.

  ‘What makes you say that?’ She cleared her throat anxiously.

  ‘I always fuck up.’ He looked at her with a lop-sided grin. ‘I find Tash so hard to read – I mean, Christ, I love her but you know even when I first met her, I couldn’t tell if she was attracted to me or not. She gives out very funny signals.’

  ‘I know that.’ Zoe smiled. ‘She’s the most bashful extrovert in the world.’

  ‘So I thought she was all for this thing, but now I reckon she’s not keen.’ His palms hit his forehead again. ‘In fact, I keep expecting her to beg me not to go through with it.’

  ‘Things aren’t that drastic, surely?’

  Niall shrugged. ‘She seemed really happy about it to start with, but I suppose she just wanted what I wanted. Now she’s so frosty and uncommunicative, I think I should just call it all off – buy myself out of the contract.’

  Zoe looked at him wonderingly. He was rather losing her here. She kept finding that her eyes were drawn to his hands – they were so bony and long-fingered that they seemed to have a life of their own, dancing around the table in search of distraction. She longed to stretch out an arm and still them for a moment.

  ‘What exactly do you mean?’ she asked, watching as his fingers played with the teaspoon.

  Niall sighed deeply, reaching down to scratch Enid who had crept anxiously up to him, topaz eyes bulging as she contemplated dashing away again.

  ‘I wasn’t altogether honest with her,’ he started. ‘I just couldn’t bring myself to tell her until it was too late and too difficult.’ He stopped, biting his lip so that Zoe could see his lovely, uneven white teeth reddening the flesh to the colour of Parma ham.

  ‘What didn’t you tell her?’

  ‘That Lisette’s behind it all,’ he sighed, closing his eyes. ‘And will be there throughout.’

  ‘Who’s Lisette?’ Zoe asked. The name was only vaguely familiar.

  ‘She’s my ex-wife and still pretty predatory.’ He grimaced. ‘I can handle her but Tash goes to pieces when she’s around. It could be a bit of a walking on eggshells situation.’

  Zoe’s mouth was hanging open. She was finding this hard to take in. His ex-wife persuading him to marry Tash? It seemed insane.

  ‘Go on,’ she murmured numbly.

  ‘Well, I flunked telling Tash until I was in Scotland and then just blurted it down the phone during a row.’ He groaned at the memory. ‘She’s been like a hurt dog ever since, cowering away from me. And I guess I’ve been pretty belligerent too, ashamed of myself for being so cowardly – drinking too much, flirting my bollocks off, acting the hell-raiser as of old. It’s a defence mechanism. I know I do it, and I know it’s madness, but it just feels so easy to slip into.’

  ‘Like a bottle?’

  He looked at her sharply and then shrugged. ‘I guess. A little. Lisette used to give me a really hard time about it, but Tash tries to ignore it, which means I just do it all the more and that hurts her so badly.’ He looked up guiltily. ‘I was a bit of a sod in Scotland.’

  Zoe nodded carefully, not knowing how to frame her next question but desperate to know.

  ‘Niall . . .’ She coughed. ‘Tell me – why on earth is your ex-wife behind your decision to marry Tash?’

  His dancing fingers momentarily stilled, Niall pulled back his chin in confusion, trying to figure out what she meant. Then, supposing she was asking him why his first marriage broke up, he shrugged.

  ‘I adored Lisette – idolised her even.’ He scratched Enid’s nose, careful not to frighten her. ‘I think I was a bit obsessive, a bit cloying for her, but I just loved her so damned much – she’s alive and ambitious and in control whereas I’ve always been a bit of a dithering bugger. She supported me, believed in me; I think her faith in me helped me focus in those early years when I went after the jobs rather than them coming after me. Christ, I did everything from washing pots to driving cabs as I waited for adverts in The Stage and prayed for big breaks.’

  Zoe watched in silence as he sat up again and poured himself another scotch, sending Enid scuttling back to her basket.

  ‘She worked for the Beeb then,’ he explained. ‘Producing documentaries with Matty. That’s how I met her – Matty and I go way back. But while Matty has the intellectual mind and didactic fervour, Lisette is far, far better at getting people motivated, at wining and dining and shining out as a talent.

  She went to work for an independent in the early eighties and her career really took off – long before mine; she supported me for years and I loved her to distraction for it. Then when I started to get the breaks, to work away so much and receive acclaim of my own, the marriage started to lose its way.’

  ‘Was she jealous maybe?’ Zoe coaxed, but he shook his head.

  ‘She was proud of me, and proud of her contribution to my success,’ he explained. ‘It was more about my abstraction, the fact I made friends with a new set of people on each job, took them under my wing and all but brought them to live with us. Our marriage became very crowded, Princess Diana-style. An actor is hell to live with, you know.’

  ‘Sounds like living here.’ Zoe smiled reassuringly.

  ‘Well, I think she’d started to go off me a bit by then anyway.’ He sighed. ‘She was never very faithful – I knew that early on and went through every type of hell, alternately trying to make her stop and then trying to reconcile myself to it as a factor in our marriage. She never had serious affairs – they were more like quick fixes to make herself feel good, appease the jealousy she felt when seeing me in a clinch with some actress on stage.’

  ‘But that was just acting.’ Zoe gazed at him. ‘Hers were the real thing.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’ He smiled sadly. ‘She liked the big, bad seductress role, but within our marriage she was far softer, in far greater need of reassurance. She could be a bloody bitch, don’t get me wrong, but it’s impossible not to forgive her – she’s so damned funny and charming and sexy. She’s got tremendous guts too. She would never flinch from owning up, coming clean and sitting down to talk out how we were going to work through something. And I wasn’t altogether blameless.’

  ‘In what way?’

  He took a slug of scotch. ‘I have a tendency to fall in love a lot,’ he confessed. ‘Don’t get me wrong, I don’t shag my way from film set to theatre to television studio. Lisette used to call them my “Rushes Crushes” because they generally petered out by the time the rushes of the love scene were shown the next morning, but my moping around like a love-sick teenager must have irritated the hell out of her.’

  ‘How did it end?’ She watched his animated fingers drawing intricate patterns on the table top.

  He winced. ‘She ran off with an American trustafarian who had convinced her he was the next Quentin Tarantino. Then he fucked off and left her to pick up a decimated career in the States. Even I wondered if she could do it. But she has – and now she’s back to hire me.’

  ‘She’s hired you?’ Zoe was completely confused, wondering for an awful, ludicrous moment whether Lisette was somehow paying Niall
to marry Tash.

  ‘I’m one of the leads in the next film she’s producing,’ he explained. ‘Didn’t I tell you? It’s why Tash is so upset.’

  ‘Because Lisette’s given you a job?’ Zoe suddenly realised what he’d been driving at and felt a complete fool for going so far up the wrong tree – like a by-pass protester realising she’s been camped in an oak three miles from the chain-saws. She started frantically to back-track. ‘You think that’s why Tash was unhappy in Scotland?’

  ‘Of course it is.’ Niall didn’t quite meet her gaze. ‘My bloody awful timing has driven darling Tash into a silence that I can’t shake her out of. I trust her a thousand times more than I ever trusted Lisette, I’d die for her, but she just can’t see that. She’s convinced I’d run back to Lisette if she were just to click her fingers.’

  Zoe was watching his face and could see the taut tic of worry working in his cheek.

  ‘Are you so sure you wouldn’t?’ she breathed, flinching as he looked up at her sharply.

  But his answer was cut off as India’s exquisite face appeared around the door.

  ‘Mummy – er – hi, Niall. Actually you’d be better. Can I ask your advice?’ She was hanging half-in the doorway, most of her body still on the third rung of the stairs.

  Niall, staring angrily at Zoe, pulled himself together and smiled across at her.

  ‘Sure, angel.’

  ‘I’ve got a date,’ India confessed, absolutely scarlet with embarrassment, ‘and I rather hoped you’d let me know if you think this is a bit too tarty or not?’

  As she shuffled into the room, tugging down a rather short skirt which revealed her endless legs, Niall let out a wolf whistle and shook his head. ‘It’s simply lovely – if I were ten years younger I’d fall for you myself.’

  ‘Don’t you mean twenty years?’ India asked, with the polite tactlessness of youth.

  ‘Yes, yes, I suppose so,’ Niall laughed, not really minding. He had continually to remind himself that he was closer to forty than twenty.

  India’s long, blonde hair, worn in a fringe, framed her pale, smooth face with its clever blue eyes so that she looked almost too perfect – like a pretty heroine in a Japanese comic strip. Niall could suddenly see cool, poised Zoe as a younger woman – that same impassive, flawless face and wise eyes; she must have been stunning. He stared from daughter to mother in awe.

  Zoe saw the way he was looking at her and felt absurdly flustered.

  ‘Excuse me, I think Wally’s trying to say something.’ She extracted his drooling face from her lap and headed hastily through to the scullery to pick up the dog bowls, her shoulders high with tension as she fought to calm down from her tactless cross-questioning a moment earlier. She was convinced Niall had been about to lay into her. And she was equally convinced that he had not been entirely honest with her either.

  Niall watched her snatched, nervy movements and realised that he had come close to confessing something he hadn’t even admitted to himself. Raking his hand through his hair, he turned back to India and smiled.

  ‘You look delectable, angel,’ he assured her. ‘Whoever it is, he’s a lucky sod, so he is.’

  Niall hoped he was also a very well-behaved sod; she was total jail bait in that simple, classic tunic dress which made her look at least eighteen. Tall, willowy and with features hewn like a smooth marble bust, India could never look tarty – she had too much poise and class, the sort of cut-glass looks that could earn her a fortune if she were spotted by a modelling agency. She could have a long and starved career as a coke-sniffing, chain-smoking model if she so desired. And tonight, looking as she did, she needed to be with a man who possessed tremendous self-control. Niall privately hoped he was a spotty fourteen year old who was terrified of her.

  ‘Actually, I feel really mean because it’s Ma’s birthday and we usually all eat together,’ India whispered, glancing across to the scullery. ‘But I’ve fancied this man for ages and I never dreamed he’d ask me out.’

  ‘Sure, your mother won’t mind.’ He smiled reassuringly. ‘She was on a first date once too, and she’s the others to keep her company now.’

  India looked slightly doubtful as she dashed upstairs to check her reflection one last time and then clean her teeth once again.

  With a blast of cool air, Ted sauntered in from the front door wearing his favourite navy blue shirt – always saved for hot dates – his knowing ladsy face grinning broadly. Tash had recently re-clipped his hair, but in her distraction she had cut rather too much off so that he looked like Brian Glover, his scalp gleaming through the lightest dusting of stubble like a white chocolate truffle sprinkled with cocoa. He reeked of aftershave and was carrying a card for Zoe.

  ‘Where is she?’ he asked cheerfully.

  ‘In there.’ Niall nodded towards the open door where Zoe was feeding the dogs.

  ‘India?’

  Niall gaped at him. ‘You’re India’s date?’

  ‘Sure.’ He looked mildly offended. ‘Why not?’

  ‘Well, you’re too old for one,’ snapped Niall. ‘And you’re going out with Franny . . .’

  ‘It’s off. She doesn’t like my new haircut.’

  ‘And it’s her mother’s bloody birthday,’ Niall blazed on, keeping his voice hushed but deadly. ‘You could have been a little more thoughtful.’

  Ted shrugged, unbothered. ‘Zoe was all for it – says she doesn’t want to celebrate turning forty other than by drinking herself silly and watching the box. Rufus is out too – some video sesh, I think, which basically means blagging his way into a pub in Marlbury with his schoolmates. And Pen and Gus are eating out with some potential sponsors.’

  ‘You mean Zoe’s all alone on her fortieth?’ Niall was horrified.

  ‘Way she wants it.’ Ted tossed the card on the table and headed towards the stairs, yelling for India.

  The moment they had set off in his rusty Renault 5, Niall stomped through to Zoe.

  ‘That girl is far too young to be going out with the likes of Ted,’ he declared. ‘He’s totally immoral.’

  Leaving a spoon in a dog bowl, Zoe turned back to him, surprised by his anger, but trying to keep the atmosphere light.

  ‘You sound like her father.’ She smiled awkwardly. ‘She’s been badgering me all week about it and I rather caved in, to be honest.’

  ‘He’ll try and deflower her the moment they’re away from here.’ Niall was aware that he was using the prudish, pompous language of an old biddy fresh from a Moral Meeting with the WI but he felt wildly sanctimonious right now, possibly exacerbated by the recent admissions of his own infidelity.

  ‘She knows that,’ Zoe laughed, turning back to the dog bowls. ‘When I tried to give her a gentle bit of advice about saying no when one was uncomfortable, she started reeling off the most extraordinary knowledge about how to say no, demand a condom, give a blow job and lift one’s legs for deeper penetration. It’s all those magazines she reads, I suppose.’

  ‘Jesus!’ He was appalled. ‘And you still let her go?’

  ‘She’s not planning to have sex with him, Niall,’ Zoe laughed, putting the dogs’ dinners on the stone tiles. ‘She was flabbergasted when I even broached the subject. She’s so bloody sane it frightens me – she won’t drink, loathes smoking, thinks Ecstasy is a death warrant and knows more about sexually transmitted diseases than I do.’ She headed back through to the kitchen. ‘The only thing she’s dead set on finding out about tonight is French kissing – despite the threat of mouth-ulcers and cold sores, on which she is no doubt extremely well read. She’s decided that Ted is a safe bet as he cleans his teeth regularly and never has bad breath.’

  Following her, Niall was speechless.

  ‘She never ceases to amaze me.’ Zoe turned and watched his reaction with sparkling eyes. ‘I’d trust her with my life, unlike my son whom I suspect is right now drinking his way towards having his stomach pumped.’

  Pressing his finger to his mouth, Niall tried to look shocke
d for a little longer but found himself laughing too. ‘Christ, I’ll never understand kids.’

  ‘One never does – but it’s quite good fun learning that at times.’

  ‘I wonder if I ever will.’ Niall shrugged, looking at the pictures of Zoe’s kids through the years which littered the shelves and dresser.

  ‘You and Tash will have great kids. She’ll be a wonderful mum – scatty, but great fun.’ Zoe started clearing away the debris on the table, eager to make up for her cross-questioning earlier. ‘And you’ll be a wonderful father.’

  He didn’t answer.

  Aware that he was uncomfortable even with this line of conversation, she rattled quickly and rather indiscreetly on, not seeing Ted’s unopened card as she stacked it into a pile of event schedules.

  ‘Penny is desperate for children, poor darling, but they simply can’t afford it, and there are some ghastly doubts about her fertility which have dragged on for years. If they ever want to go for it, it’s pretty likely they’d have to go through IVF treatment which would be such a trauma for them, and so costly. I think she’s beginning to panic a bit – she’s already thirty-six.’

  ‘Same age as me,’ Niall mused absently, and then suddenly snapped to attention. ‘And you are celebrating a birthday, sweetheart, which I knew nothing about. Happy returns!’ He leaned across to peck her on the cheek just as she was wiping it with a dog-foody hand, so that he got a mouthful of Chappie-flavoured fingers.

  ‘Thanks.’ Zoe moved away in polite embarrassment, her hand suddenly burning hot. ‘I’m not really celebrating this one.’

  ‘Of course you are.’ He followed her, taking the pile of papers from her hands. ‘Go upstairs and smarten up – I’m taking you out to dinner at the Olive Branch.’

  ‘Thank you, but I can’t possibly,’ she replied, flustered. ‘What about Tash? She’s coming back from this event soon.’

  ‘We’ll leave her a note to join us.’ He was already binning the papers and searching for his coat. ‘Now go and wash your hands while I call Ange and get him to squeeze in another table.’ He dodged past Beetroot who was snarling at him whilst trying to eat at the same time, almost choking with the combined effort.