Triangles

by Andrea Newman

  Mercifully he was out of sight before the full idiotic schoolgirl blush engulfed her. The next few interviews passed in a blur and she thought about him all the way home on the tube. It was like meeting a film star unexpectedly. She couldn’t remember when last she had felt so ridiculously joyful. Half a minute of harmless flirtation, that was all it was, but it had transformed her day.

  When she got home, Matthew was already preparing supper. He was better about cooking now that she had a part-time job. He had fetched the children back from June-next-door and they were watching their favourite television programme.

  ‘Hullo,’ he said when she went into the kitchen, ‘How was your day?’

  She hesitated for a split second and decided, for no good reason, not to share her harmless secret with him. She preferred to hug it to herself. ‘Not bad,’ she said, feeling a great wave of deceitful glee. ‘How was yours?’

  He said it was okay; she poured herself a drink and went into the other room to see the children. Their programme was just finishing and she was only in time to catch the credits. The name jumped out at her from the screen: presented by Anne Reilly.

  It was like learning a new word: there was an unwritten law that you were bound to see it again three times within a short space of time. She went on interviewing at London Airport but didn’t see Sean Reilly or indeed any other attractive man. But the very next week there was a picture of Anne Reilly in the paper, receiving some award for her television programme, and an interview with her in which it said she had a husband called Sean who was a merchant banker. Lynn was thankful to be alone when she came upon all this information, as she was sure the shock it gave her would have been visible. Anne Reilly smiled up at her, one hand ruffling her short dark shiny cap of hair, the other clutching the award. She had a big wide smile and slightly too large teeth that were none the less endearing. She looked warm and friendly. You could see why all the children in the country adored her. The interviewer praised her successful career and her happy marriage. Anne Reilly modestly put it all down to a mixture of hard work and luck. The interviewer unkindly pointed out that despite all this, she didn’t have children of her own. Anne Reilly said that was the one great sorrow of her life and made the interviewer look like a heartless beast for mentioning it.

  The day after that Lynn literally bumped into Sean Reilly at the airport as she was racing from loo to coffee lounge between interviews. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this,’ he said laughing as he picked up her bag and scattered questionnaires. ‘Come and have a drink with me, my flight’s been delayed.’

  It was out of the question, of course. She had work to do; she had children to collect. She was breathless with shock at colliding with him, but there was absolutely no point in their having a drink together.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That would be lovely.’

  They sat in the bar and drank Martinis. She felt as if she were suddenly a character in an old film. She could not recall when she had last drunk a Martini or why it had suddenly become her favourite drink. His too, it appeared, or was he merely pretending? They talked about themselves: his green eyes staring at her made her feel mildly hypnotised. She could have told him anything. She felt she had known him all her life and yet he was still an exciting stranger who terrified her.

  ‘I don’t even know your name,’ he said after the second Martini.

  ‘Lynn Culver.’ Her throat was dry despite the drink. ‘And I should be working.’ But already it didn’t seem important any more.

  ‘We can make it all up,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you.’

  ‘I saw your wife in the paper,’ she said, ‘getting her award.’

  ‘Would you believe me,’ he said, ‘if I told you I’ve thought of nothing but you since we met?’

  ‘No,’ she said automatically, but she did believe him because she wanted to, and she smiled.

  ‘If you gave me your telephone number,’ he said, ‘I could ring and invite you to lunch.’

  She was overjoyed and confused; her heart seemed to do a disconcerting leap that made it hard for her to breathe. She muttered something about it all being impossible because of her husband and children; then she gave him her telephone number and watched him write it down in the back of his diary.

  He rang a week later, when she had given up hope, despaired on the phone to Angie, cursed herself for being stupid and vain. He rang when she was loading the washing machine, prior to going to the supermarket. ‘Hullo,’ he said. ‘Sean Reilly. D’you remember me?’

  She said yes, she did, trembling.

  ‘Lynn?’ he said hesitatingly.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I wanted to ask you to lunch,’ he said, ‘but you sound so remote. Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes, of course, I’m fine.’ She heard her own voice, so cool, so detached, and marvelled that it could come out of her own throat.

  ‘It’s not the same at Heathrow without you,’ he said. ‘I wanted to ring before but I’ve been away, and when I got back they had a very inferior type of interviewer. Could I complain to someone, d’you think?’

  She laughed. She assumed that was what she was meant to do. The tiny joke eased the tension and she suddenly felt relaxed with him again. ‘Ah well,’ she said, ‘you see, I’m so expensive, they simply can’t afford me all the time.’ Which was one way of explaining that she was lucky to have a part-time job at all.

  ‘I’m sure you must be very much in demand,’ he said, ‘but I do hope you can find time to have lunch with me one day next week. Would Tuesday or Friday be any good for you? Could you look at your diary?’

  She glanced at the calendar where all the social engagements, such as dentist and PTA, were scribbled. Now was the moment to stop all this nonsense. They were playing a silly game and they both knew it. Of course lunch was innocuous in itself, but its implications were not. She was flattered and that must be enough.

  ‘I think Tuesday would be better for me,’ she said, her mind racing ahead. June-next-door could always collect the children from school on a Tuesday if Lynn was delayed at work, but she often went to see her mother on Fridays and sometimes Matthew came home early for the weekend.

  ‘Wonderful,’ Sean Reilly said. ‘How about the Savoy Grill at twelve thirty?’

  Angie fell about laughing down the phone when Lynn told her that. ‘He’s certainly trying to impress you,’ she said.

  ‘He said it was near his office,’ Lynn added feebly, and Angie laughed even more. ‘And he gave me his office number to ring if I got delayed. So I can always cancel. That’s what I should do really. The whole thing is ridiculous. I know that.’

  ‘If you cancel,’ Angie said, ‘I’ll never speak to you again. This is a chance in a lifetime to cheer yourself up. It’s not actually a crime, you know, to have lunch with a man who isn’t your husband.’

  ‘But I’ve got nothing to wear,’ Lynn heard herself say.

  ‘That’s better. You’ve got that red dress you wore to my divorce.’

  ‘But that was a birthday present from Matthew.’

  ‘Well, it looked very nice in court. A blonde in a red dress always looks sexy. Especially with legs like yours. Even my solicitor was impressed and he’s half dead. And you must wear those silly shoes, the ones you got in Bally sale.’

  ‘But I can’t walk in them.’

  ‘Of course you can’t, but you can totter very nicely. Just travel in your wellies and change in the loo. I’ve heard rumours that they actually let you sit down for lunch at the Savoy Grill. That’s probably why it’s so expensive. Now please may I go? There’s a load of manure outside that’s really demanding my attention.’

  Lynn had the red dress cleaned, smuggled it in and out of the house like contraband. When she was alone, she practised walking in the silly shoes. They hurt so much that after a while her feet went numb, but they certainly did wonderful things for her legs, Angie was right about that. Then she suddenly wondered what all the fuss was about. Sean Reilly had alr
eady seen her at Heathrow in jeans and jersey, with no make-up.

  Matthew had taken on a lot of freelance work so they could afford a proper holiday abroad. He spent most of the weekend at his drawing board which was set up in a corner of the living-room and she watched him covertly while she did the ironing. Through the window she could hear the delighted squeals of Emma and Tom visiting June-next-door, whose popularity had soared since she acquired a puppy. It was a typical family weekend.

  Lynn tried to see the Matthew she had married, the young man now submerged under a load of domestic responsibility. She remembered thinking of him in her teens as a replacement for the teddy bear she had grown out of: all brown hair and brown eyes and cuddly warmth, always in touch with her moods, ready with understanding and comfort. Where had that image gone? Matthew looked much the same physically; he hadn’t really aged any more than she had. But in some way he had turned in upon himself, become shut down, as if for protection. Had she burdened him so greatly with her pregnancies, her miscarriage, her need for financial support mixed with just the right amount of independence, her conflicting demands for sex and celibacy, conversation and silence? Had she, in short, been impossible? Or had he withdrawn from her for reasons of his own? Should they be discussing this very subject or was it safer to leave well alone?

  ‘Coffee?’ she said.

  ‘Thanks.’

  She unplugged the iron and went into the kitchen. While she was making the coffee she thought about Tuesday. She felt like a naughty child planning to play truant from school. She prayed that neither Matthew nor Tom nor Emma would go down with an infectious disease on Monday night. Where could she legitimately be going in the red dress at that hour on Tuesday morning? To an interview with another agency, she decided, in the hope of getting more and better paid work. But would even that worthy intention justify leaving the sick one on their bed of pain to be cared for by June-next-door or Rosemary-opposite?

  She went back into the living-room with the coffee and Matthew took it out of her hand without looking up from his drawing. ‘I think this might be good,’ he said in tones of real enthusiasm. ‘They’re mad about roof terraces, these people, and they’ve got money to burn. I might have to go and stay with them again to get it all sorted out.’ It was one of the features of his new job and his freelance work that he occasionally had to spend a night away from home.

  ‘It looks terrific,’ she said, although she had never really learnt to read plans properly, and he knew it, so he laughed, though not unkindly. She envied him work that could make him so visibly excited. She envied the clients with money to burn and wondered if they were at all like Sean and Anne Reilly. Then she reflected that envy was not an attractive quality and she should give it up. The children came back from playing with the puppy and Matthew stopped working and had a game with them while she prepared supper. She thought what a lucky woman she was and how grateful she ought to be for her good fortune.

  God was indulgent to her and nobody fell ill on Monday night. She lay awake for hours, listening to Matthew’s steady breathing and wondering how he could possibly fall asleep without noticing how tense she was beside him. She finally took a pill and had terrible dreams about buses going in wrong directions and herself getting off and waiting on the kerb for the next one but knowing it was already too late to reach her destination on time.

  Tuesday dawned bright and sunny. Everyone was healthy and departed for work or school. Her hands shook as she did her make-up but she had an absurd sense of wellbeing. She was actually going to be allowed this enormous pointless treat, like a prisoner out on parole. No one was going to arrive and say her permit had been cancelled.

  Sean Reilly was every bit as mesmerising as she remembered him. There had been an awful moment on the tube when she imagined he might have turned into some kind of odious conceited boring dwarf. He seemed impressed enough with the red dress and the silly shoes to gratify even Angie; he said, ‘I was afraid you might cancel,’ and when they were both looking at the menu, she noticed that his hands were ever so slightly shaking. She felt instantly better: excited but calm. A woman of the world at last – what a joke. It had only taken her twenty-eight years to achieve it.

  The prices made her dizzy, but she ordered what she wanted, although by the time it arrived she could hardly taste it. They had had several drinks and discovered a shared passion for Humphrey Bogart. They spent much of the meal trying to out-do each other with their memories of his films, but all the time Sean Reilly was looking at her as if he was thinking of something much more intimate. She found herself wanting him in such a basic physical way that she developed the sort of pelvic ache she only dimly remembered from the early days with Matthew. She was ashamed, and she also did not care. She felt beautiful and desirable and strong. She felt alive again. Fun had been missing from her life but now she was having precisely that once again. A line from the Beatles came to her: ‘Fun is the one thing money can’t buy,’ yet here was Sean Reilly’s money buying it for her. Then she remembered the line came from a song called ‘She’s Leaving Home’, and she was suddenly frightened.

  She had talked about Emma and Tom as well as Humphrey Bogart. After lunch, Sean said he had an appointment in Chiswick, so they could share a taxi and she would be in time to collect her children from school. In the taxi she found herself badly wanting him to kiss her, but instead he held her hand and said, ‘You’ve no idea how much I envy you having children.’ She was astonished but before she could say anything he added, ‘Anne doesn’t want them, you see.’

  Lynn said, ‘But in the paper –’

  He said, ‘Oh yes, she always says that to reporters, it sounds a lot better, the big grief. I can’t really blame her, she’s got a great career going – why should she give it up, even for a year?’

  ‘But you do blame her,’ Lynn said, because his voice made it clear and she already felt she knew him well enough to say so.

  ‘No,’ he said, letting go of her hand. ‘I blame myself for not getting all that straight before we got married.’ He got out of the taxi and paid the driver to take her on to Hounslow. ‘I hope I see you again,’ he said. ‘You’re very special. May I phone you?’

  She was home in time to change out of the red dress before she had to explain it. She chewed mints so the children wouldn’t think she smelled of alcohol. Angie rang up and chortled and said Sean was being very subtle and clever with all this sad humility. ‘A man of experience,’ she said. ‘He’s been over the jumps before. Still, he’d be no use to you if he hadn’t.’ It was at times like this that Lynn regretted having told Angie that Matthew had been her first lover. Worse, that she had never kissed her previous boyfriends without clenching her teeth. It made her feel so old-fashioned, when the newspapers were telling her how permissive everyone else was. And now here she was feeling guilty for something she hadn’t even done yet. The way the word yet popped into her mind was alarming. She suddenly understood something that as a schoolgirl she had always thought was stupid: that bit in the Bible about committing adultery in your heart. It sounded like grounds for divorce. It also reminded her of food getting spoilt in the shops, like tins of salmon that had to be sent back before they poisoned you.

  That night Matthew made love to her for the first time in many weeks. She couldn’t remember exactly how long it was but she knew she had thought resentfully that she might as well not bother taking the Pill, though she did. She had given up making the first move, however, because Matthew so often was not in the mood, and then she felt rejected and humiliated, which usually led to a row. It was simpler to ignore the whole issue, wait for him to be ready, and then go along with it, whether she was in the mood or not, because if she refused, then that too would lead to yet another row. She much preferred silence to rows. But that night it was all magical. She wondered if he had somehow picked up her mood of suppressed elation and that had made her subtly more attractive. Whatever the reason, Matthew made love to her that night and she fantasised about Sean
Reilly.

  After that it was only a matter of time. She went on meeting him for lunches in smaller and more intimate restaurants, or drinks in secluded pubs. She was always afraid of being seen by someone she knew, yet somehow also convinced she wouldn’t be. Their relationship seemed to have a magical element, a sort of time warp, that rendered them almost invisible, although they were present in the same places and at the same hours as everyone else. They talked about their marriages and their childhoods. Sometimes they just looked at each other without saying anything for what seemed like long spells of time. They held hands under the table and they kissed in taxis. She felt young again.

  Her job proved a help and a hindrance. It gave her a legitimate excuse to be out, but the time she spent with Sean meant she either had to skimp her work or earn less money. Sometimes they sat together making up the answers to her questionnaires and she discovered there were more varieties of guilt than the merely sexual. She had always prided herself on her honesty, and here she was, cheating her employer and deceiving her husband, and all for what? Technically, nothing.

  They both longed to make love but he did nothing to persuade her. ‘It’s different for me,’ he said. ‘Anne and I don’t sleep together any more, we’re more like brother and sister. But you and Matthew still have a real marriage. I wouldn’t like to do anything to harm that. So it has to be your decision. You know how much I want you – but only when you’re ready. Maybe you never will be. I have to risk that. It won’t change how I feel about you.’

  Lynn didn’t repeat much of that to Angie. She could already hear Angie saying, ‘If you believe that, you’ll believe anything,’ and there was no way she could explain to Angie that she only had to look at Sean, hear his voice, to know he was telling the truth. ‘Irish blarney,’ Angie would say, in that jokey contemptuous way she had. ‘We know all about that, now don’t we?’

  Matthew brought home holiday brochures and they discussed the relative merits of Italy and Yugoslavia. The children got excited: they had never been abroad. It was the same excitement Lynn remembered from her own childhood. What could this new strange experience possibly be like? But she noticed that Emma and Tom soon drifted back to the familiar delights of the television. She herself found it increasingly difficult to look at Anne Reilly’s cheerful face without wishing her ill.