Much later, talking to her favourite ex-lover who had returned, she told him what had happened. ‘But think,’ he said to console her, ‘how boring it would have been if you’d kept him.’
‘Boring but warm,’ she said.
Poison
Richard’s best friend is called Nicky. They met at university and Richard was best man at Nicky’s wedding. No doubt Nicky would be best man at our wedding, if we ever get married, but for one small snag: Nicky is a woman.
I wasn’t jealous of Nicky at first. I was too busy falling in love with Richard and hearing all about his ex-wife Caroline. Nicky was just a name then; she was still living in California with her husband. If I was jealous of anyone, it was Caroline, for sharing all those years with Richard; but pretty soon I felt sorry for her instead. Poor Caroline: after all, she’d lost him, hadn’t she?
I’d given up hope of meeting anyone like Richard; in fact I didn’t believe men like him existed any more. Then one day he walked into the office, said he was looking for a two-roomed flat. He and his wife had just got divorced and they were selling the house and buying a flat each. I liked the matter-of-fact way he told me all that, although I was a stranger: I liked feeling he wanted to take me into his confidence. He didn’t seem heartbroken, merely practical: it wasn’t that he wanted me to feel sorry for him. But I did, of course.
I showed him all the flats we had on our books and he said any of them would do. He seemed remarkably uncaring where he lived. I urged him to wait, maybe pay a bit more, hold out for three rooms and a garden.
‘If you’re used to a house, you need extra space – and somewhere to sit in the sun, if we ever get any,’ I said. He was a solicitor, so I thought he could afford it.
‘You’re delightfully bossy,’ he said, making it sound like a compliment. ‘Why don’t we discuss my requirements over dinner?’
I don’t remember what we ate that night. Richard said he couldn’t bear people walking about above his head, so we agreed to look for a top-floor flat with roof terrace. I just kept gazing into his eyes and feeling dizzy.
He had strange-coloured eyes, sort of greeny brown, and a way of looking at you that made it hard for you to look away without seeming evasive. Rather like the way a cat stares at you: a challenge. He told lots of jokes against himself, laughing in a rueful way. When he smiled at me, I felt I was the most important person in the world. His hair was very short and curly, light brown, the sort you could wash and dry in ten minutes if you ran your fingers through it.
I was hopelessly in love.
‘He sounds too good to be true,’ my sister Kathy said when I told her about him. ‘Thirty-two, divorced, solvent, sexy and nice. I simply don’t believe it. Where’s he been hiding? There has to be a catch.’
‘Oh, don’t, don’t,’ I moaned, drawing my knees up to my chin and rocking to and fro in her best bentwood chair.
‘Did you sleep with him?’
‘No.’
‘Playing hard to get, eh? Very good.’
‘He didn’t give me the chance,’ I wailed. ‘He wouldn’t come up for coffee. He just kissed my hand – my hand, imagine that – and drove off.’ Leaving me chewing my knuckles with frustration.
‘Clever chap.’ She thought it over for a bit. ‘You don’t think he’s gay, do you?’
‘No, I do not.’ I wanted to throw something at her because she was saying all the things I’d thought. ‘He told me I looked like the young Julie Christie.’
Kathy fell about with raucous laughter. ‘That settles it,’ she gasped, choking. ‘He must be in love. And shortsighted as well.’
But the next time Richard took me out for dinner, he did come up for coffee and we fell into bed and it was wonderful. By then I knew all about Caroline and how she’d nearly driven him mad with her insane jealousy. She couldn’t bear him to see his friends without her or even to work late, which was awkward as he did extra stuff in the evenings for the Citizens Advice Bureau and One Parent Families, which took up a lot of his spare time.
‘Typical Aquarian,’ said Kathy when I told her. ‘All that social conscience and no time for his wife.’
‘But she was having an affair all along,’ I said triumphantly. ‘That’s why they got divorced.’
After our first night together Richard made a date for the weekend before he left for work. No nonsense about phoning me later. That afternoon a huge bunch of flowers arrived at the office for me, with a note: ‘Darling Alison, I thought I’d never be happy again. Thank you for proving me wrong.’ It was as if he knew I was afraid he’d think me a tart and wanted to reassure me in advance. I burst into tears on the spot, and Ian, who was passing my desk at the time, said, ‘Well, he’s got style, I’ll say that for him.’
‘Oh, Ian,’ I sobbed, ‘I want you to meet him, I want your opinion, man to man. He’s so wonderful.’
‘Then you don’t need my opinion, do you?’ said Ian kindly, patting me on the head like an uncle. He’d been my first lover when I came to London and we were still good friends, which was just as well as we worked in the same office.
Richard and I started spending all our free time together. It was very exhausting. We were so busy making love and eating and looking at flats and telling each other our life stories that we got hardly any sleep and went around looking hollow-eyed but feeling unnaturally energetic, as if on a permanent high. Then a two-bedder with roof terrace came along and Richard said he wanted it. ‘That is, if you do,’ he said. ‘I think we could be very happy here, don’t you?’ Three months later he moved in and I moved in with him. It was a great joke in the office that I’d found a new flat and a new man and still got my usual commission.
My parents were delighted, even though we were just living together. They thought it was only a matter of time before we got married and of course I was hoping that too. In any case they were sick of seeing me with married men and having me sobbing down the phone when each one went back to his wife. I hadn’t enjoyed it much either, but I’d reached that stage, late twenties, when all the men I met seemed to be married. Until Richard. I felt so grateful to Caroline – if I’d met her I think I’d have gone down on my knees and thanked her for being such a jealous unfaithful cow. Something like that, anyway. Words to that effect.
Kathy and Ian were odd about Richard. They both claimed they liked him and they were happy for me, but Kathy said he was still too good to be true and Ian said he was used to getting his own way. Each remark sounded like a sinister warning, but when I complained to each about the other, I got the same response: ‘Oh, it must be envy, pay no attention.’ I pushed the thought away.
Nicky was still in America with her husband then. She was just a childish scrawl on an Air Mail envelope and Richard used to read out the funny bits. I thought it was nice that he shared her letters with me. I didn’t mind her being a girl. I didn’t mind anything in those early days: I knew we’d be happy for ever.
Then suddenly Nicky was getting divorced and coming home. Richard seemed very worried about her: apparently she was penniless. I didn’t understand how; from what I’d heard of the Californian divorce laws, the wife got half of everything.
‘True,’ Richard said. ‘But half of nothing is still nothing, even in California.’ Apparently Nicky’s ex-husband had gambled it all away.
Richard started getting the spare room ready for Nicky without even asking me. He tidied away all our suitcases under his desk and put my old duvet on the single bed.
‘You don’t mind, do you?’ he asked, when he caught me inspecting his preparations. ‘It’s only for a few days, till she finds a flat.’
I hastily rearranged my expression. How could I say I minded Nicky in our spare room when only last week Ian had come to dinner, drunk too much and spent the night on our sofa because it was so near the office and saved him driving home? Richard hadn’t minded that at all; in fact he thought it a great joke. Minding was something Caroline would have done.
‘Of course I don’t mind,’
I said.
He kissed me and I felt rewarded. ‘I’m longing for you two to meet,’ he said. ‘She’s such fun – I just know you’ll like her.’
It was a long drive to the airport so I had plenty of time to mull over that remark. Did he mean I wasn’t fun and she wouldn’t like me? Why was our relationship going to be so one-sided? Nicky was arriving at dawn and I could have stayed in bed, but I went along because I thought it looked more enthusiastic.
She was tiny. She wore blue jeans and a white T-shirt and no make-up, and she had very dark, very shiny hair that swung as she moved. It swung a lot as she hurled herself into Richard’s arms and he actually lifted her off the ground.
‘Oh, Ricky,’ she announced to the airport at large, ‘it’s so great to see you.’
I could swear there were tears in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall, plucky little trooper that she was.
‘This is Alison,’ Richard said, when he finally put her down.
She looked at me for a moment and I was about to hold out my hand when she suddenly hugged me.
‘I’m so happy about you two,’ she declared. ‘Ricky’s had such a lousy time, he deserves a break.’
On the drive back I insisted she sat in the front seat. She didn’t argue much. She and Richard kept up a continuous flow of chat about people they both knew and I didn’t, including her ex-husband. Richard sounded as indignant about him as she was over Caroline.
Nicky defended him. ‘He’s changed a lot,’ she said. ‘It was really sad. By the time we split, he was so hooked on gambling, he’d have bet on his mother’s life. I wanted him to get therapy, but it was too late, I guess.’
From my vantage point in the back seat I studied the cut of her hair and the peculiarities of her accent. You could still tell she was English, but only just. Why did I find the way she spoke so irritating? I had no reason to suppose it was an affectation.
When we got home, she admired everything extravagantly, denied having jet lag, talked a lot and fell asleep in mid-sentence. Richard carried her to bed and she was still there when we got back from work. She slept for fourteen hours. When she woke up she was bright as a button and clamouring to take us out for a meal. By the end of the week she had found a job in a travel agent’s, rented a room and moved out, leaving a grateful note and a houseplant. The whole flat reeked of incense from the scent she used. Richard said yet again how nice she was and I agreed.
‘You don’t sound very sure,’ he said, with that direct gaze of his. ‘You do like her, don’t you?’
‘Yes, of course I do.’ I was thinking how I would have to open all the windows and spray all the rooms with air freshener when Richard was out.
‘I can’t imagine anyone not liking Nicky,’ he said.
I felt condemned.
‘Invite her to supper,’ Kathy suggested. ‘Lay it on thick. Invite her so often even Richard gets tired of her.’
But I couldn’t. I was so thankful Nicky had gone, I didn’t want to see her again. Ever. I was sick of the sight of her dark shiny hair, and sick of the sound of her phoney accent, and most of all sick of the way Richard looked at her as if she was something special when they laughed about old friends. ‘Sorry, Alison, this must be very boring for you.’ Occasionally they’d remember I hadn’t the faintest idea who they were discussing.
‘But if she was a man, you wouldn’t mind, would you?’ Kathy said.
‘No, of course not. Well, not much, anyway.’
‘Then you’ve got to pretend.’
Easy for Kathy to give advice. She didn’t have to answer the phone all the time.
‘Hi, Alison, it’s Nicky. How are you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Is Ricky there?’
‘Yes. I’ll get him for you.’
Their names were so silly, I twitched with irritation. Nobody else called Richard that. I longed to call her Nicola, but feared it might sound hostile, so I didn’t call her anything. Hullo, you bitch, get out of my life, I wanted to scream. Instead I smiled at her a lot when Richard brought her home unexpectedly for drinks or dinner, the same way he brought friends who were men. Sometimes my face ached with smiling and I was so animated Richard thought I was drunk. Sometimes I was. I found it helped me be nice to her.
Kathy met her once, said she wasn’t the two-headed monster I’d been describing. ‘Her hair is maddening, I agree,’ she said, ‘but she’s quite pleasant. Sort of … ordinary.’
It wasn’t a word I’d ever have thought of to describe Nicky. I felt I’d let my sister down: she sounded disappointed. Never one to mince words, she went on, ‘You don’t really think he’s having it off with her, do you?’
‘No. Not really. Only when I wake up at four in the morning. I’d believe anything then. But in a way that makes it worse. I’ve got no right to be jealous. Only … why does she have to be his best friend? Why does she have to be a woman?’
‘Why does she have to be at all?’ Kathy finished for me. ‘Maybe Caroline had a point.’
I introduced Ian to Nicky in the hope they would fall in love, but he complained that she talked like Jackie Kennedy. ‘That little-girl voice that forces you to listen.’ And he was right, although I hadn’t noticed. When she wasn’t shrieking her head off at airports, she did have an unnaturally soft voice. ‘Women like that are always very arrogant,’ said Ian, as if he had met a lot of them.
Richard came home late with a pile of holiday brochures. ‘I thought we could make plans,’ he said, looking excited and pleased with himself. ‘Get away for a week or two.’ He started leafing through them.
I ought to have been thrilled: I’d been yearning for a holiday with him. But he hadn’t phoned and supper was overcooked and I’d had a few drinks to stop me picturing him with Nicky. I picked up one of the brochures and saw the stamp of Nicky’s agency on the back.
‘Oh, you got them from Nicky, did you?’ I said. It was an effort to use her name.
‘Yes, of course. Might as well.’ He didn’t even look up. ‘She’ll organise it all for us, get the best deal.’
I tried to look through the brochure, but it didn’t seem pretty any more. When he asked if I’d seen anything I fancied, I said no.
‘I thought we could let Nicky stay here while we’re away,’ he went on. ‘That room of hers is so depressing, poor Nicky.’
‘Is that where you were?’ I said. ‘In her room?’
He looked up.
‘Why don’t we take her on holiday with us?’ I said. ‘Or better still, why don’t you go off with her and I’ll stay at home?’
He stared at me. ‘What on earth’s the matter with you?’
‘You’re late and dinner’s ruined and you didn’t bother to phone, you were too busy having fun with dear little Nicky.’ I heard myself sound like a nagging wife, my voice rising and shaking with rage, while my heart seemed to be giving a fair imitation of a pneumatic drill.
‘I simply don’t believe this,’ he said, very cold. ‘You’re behaving exactly like Caroline.’
‘Why not? That’s how you’re treating me. You do everything you can to make me jealous and then you blame me when I am. I’m sick to death of hearing about bloody Nicky. Why don’t you live with her if she’s so perfect?’
It was awful, like being two people. One of them was yelling abuse while the other one listened, appalled. I felt sick inside but I couldn’t stop. Out it all poured, like a bilious flood. Finally there was silence, so I must have finished. It seemed a very long time before he put his arms round me.
‘Darling,’ he said, when I was quiet. ‘Please listen to me. Nicky is a friend, no more, no less. She’s a friend the way Bill and Steve and Martin and Peter are friends. Only she happens to be my best friend and she happens to be a woman. I’ve known her fourteen years. I do not fancy her and she does not fancy me. I couldn’t even tell you the colour of her eyes and I don’t remember her birthday. But I value her friendship and I have no intention of giving it up, even if it makes you hyster
ical. Now, that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, in fact I love you very much, but I can’t accept that loving you rules out having friends of both sexes. I thought we got that clear at the start.’
For the first time I felt like one of Richard’s clients. This was how he must sound, kind but firm, when he explained a legal point.
‘If I don’t mind you being friends with Ian,’ he went on relentlessly, ‘why do you mind me being friends with Nicky?’
Exactly. He’d got me there, neatly backed into a corner. I wished I’d never mentioned Ian but I’d been trying to prove how unlike Caroline I was.
‘I don’t know,’ I said miserably. I felt ashamed of myself: I knew I was in the wrong. And yet, somehow, however obscurely, wasn’t he a bit in the wrong as well, just a tiny bit? Well, if he was, I couldn’t prove it. Maybe all my bad feelings were self-inflicted, like a psychosomatic illness.
‘About tonight,’ he said. ‘I called at the shop for the brochures, then I drove her home and she asked me in for a drink. I tried to ring you, but her phone was out of order. We got talking about how she could get a mortgage on a studio flat and whether her parents could lend her the deposit. That’s all.’
‘Yes, I see,’ I said. It was almost embarrassing to be so thoroughly reassured. It was like needing help because I had fallen down in the street. I was an object of mingled pity and scorn.
‘Now,’ he said, kissing the top of my head, ‘shall we eat that burnt dinner and go to bed early?’
That should have been the end of it, and for a few weeks it was. Nicky’s parents gave her five thousand pounds, Richard lent her another five, she got a mortgage for the rest and I showed her round several studio flats, though eventually she bought one from another agent. But we didn’t book a holiday. Suddenly Richard was unexpectedly busy at the office. Maybe later in the year, he said.
I tried so hard I felt permanently exhausted, but I couldn’t get the balance right. Either I was tight-lipped when he mentioned Nicky’s name, or suspiciously radiant. Either I dragged her into the conversation at every opportunity or I never referred to her at all. If he said he’d seen her, I was resentful, whether I smiled or not; and if he didn’t say he’d seen her, I was convinced he was seeing her on the sly. She became an obsession, and yet I knew, rationally, that she was no threat to me. But thinking about her poisoned my life. She cast a cold shadow, like somebody standing between me and the sun.
Triangles Page 2