‘You’re mad. How can a bloody city be more important than a man?’
Jessica went out and walked about. She came home and slept heavily; she went to work in a daze. Colin wrote letters and rang her up to ask when she’d be arriving. She said she didn’t know yet; she had work to finish; people were relying on her. He sent her a cassette of Roberta Flack singing ‘Jessie, come home, there’s a hole in the bed,’ and she started crying all over again. She thought it was the hardest and most important decision she’d ever make and she had to make it alone. She went to Kensington and sat on a bench in Edwardes Square to calm herself. The white stucco houses in all their tall thin perfection were full of enchantment still.
When she had written the letter she went out to post it at midnight, in case she lost her nerve. It was a bright cold night: the stars were watching her as she posted goodbye into the box, and the lights were plunging into the river. She felt sad but she didn’t feel alone. Perhaps they could still be friends; perhaps he would come back because he missed her; perhaps there was someone else out there who loved London as much as she did. She didn’t know yet. She was in pain but the pain made sense because she had not betrayed herself. She was staying at home. This was where she belonged.
Christmas Magic
If only it could be optional, Laura thought, like holidays. Then you could say, without loss of face, ‘No, I’m not having one this year, I can’t afford it,’ or ‘I’m saving up to have a really good one in three years’ time,’ and no one would think any the less of you. Or, failing that, if it could come round at regular but infrequent intervals, like Leap Year, and then you might just be able to cope with it. Or if you could choose when to have it, perhaps when the weather was better and you were in a good mood and you felt like some spontaneous rejoicing. But no, it was a birthday and so of course it had to come round relentlessly on the same day every year. For the whole of your life, on 25 December you were obliged to be full of goodwill.
‘Don’t be such a misery,’ Kate said when she moaned about Christmas. Kate had taken to calling her Scrooge, and although she managed to laugh, it hurt. They had read the story at school and Laura couldn’t remember if Scrooge had always hated Christmas or if something had happened to trigger him off. In her own case she knew perfectly well what it was. Christmas had been wonderful, literally full of wonder, when she and Kate and James could hardly go to sleep for excitement about Santa Claus, and woke at dawn to slide down their beds and kick the rustling pillowcases packed with goodies. It had been even more wonderful when she grew up and fell in love and spent Christmas with John or Stephen or Tony, as well as with her family. And it was still wonderful for her parents, because they were religious, and wonderful for Kate, because she had children to get excited, and wonderful for James, because he had Caroline to make love with. In short, Christmas could be wonderful if you were religious, or a child, or a parent, or if you had a lover. But if you didn’t fit into any of these categories, then it could be pretty bloody awful and turn you into Scrooge, although you knew that no one liked a misery and you were digging your own social grave.
What had happened to her was Michael. Three years of being in love with someone who could never spend Christmas with you because he had to spend it with his children. That proved he was a good father but didn’t do much for your self-esteem. He couldn’t spend your birthday with you, either, because he had to spend it with his wife, as it was her birthday too. That confirmed your belief in astrology but otherwise it was pretty bad news. And of course Bank Holidays and weekends were out; it would have been silly to ask about them. They were spent digging the garden or laying concrete paths or building shelves or, just occasionally, putting the car on the ferry to France to load up with cheap wine, a nice day out for the family, of course, but you didn’t mention that. So you had to make do with long lunch hours (alibi the dentist, the hairdresser, or sudden illness) and the occasional evening, where the strain of the lies that had to be told seemed to crawl into bed with you and nearly, but not quite, wreck the whole thing.
Of course it was stupid to fall in love with a married man, she realised that, especially when you were only twenty-three and quite attractive, to anyone who liked blonde hair and green eyes; when you had a good job, your boss claimed you were the perfect secretary and he’d be lost without you, and your friends said you deserved the best of everything. But none of these people knew how delicious Michael’s skin smelt or the way he looked when you made love or the jokes he told you while he was getting dressed. So they couldn’t really understand what made you waste three years of your life and not regret it. Because of course you had come to your senses eventually and broken it off, knowing you were doing the right thing because the pain had finally made you numb to everything and you were like an animal in a trap that would bite off a limb to escape. There had to be more in the world for you than this, being on the fringe of someone’s life and fitting into the tiny spaces he made for you. But she hadn’t expected it would take so long to recover, to pick up the friends who had grown sick of her never making plans but always sitting by the phone just in case; to make new ones at evening classes, dramatic society, health club, new ones who knew nothing about what an idiot she had been. She hadn’t known it would be another two years before the pain finally went, leaving merely a great emptiness. Was it so unreasonable to hate Christmas after all that?
She made a joke of it at the office, the Scrooge joke that Kate had begun. She started a Society for the Abolition of Christmas and found enthusiastic support through October and November when the pressure was on to buy presents you couldn’t afford for your loved ones and cards for people you disliked, but around the second week of December she noticed that the momentum of the season took over and SAC members fell away. Somewhere inside them, behind all the token resistance, was a hard core of festivity. They started ordering turkeys and buying holly and tinsel and brightly coloured paper. They still complained about it all, but it was a ritual complaint, put on for her benefit, to conceal the fact that deep down they were really enjoying themselves and they wanted an excuse for celebration.
‘It’s only the back end of a horse,’ said Kate crisply on the phone, ‘so you won’t need much rehearsal. Arriving on Christmas Eve will be quite all right. Of course Mum and Dad would like you to come sooner but if you can’t, you can’t, I suppose.’
Oh God, the fearful jollity of Kate’s house loomed before her like a punishment, and then to be jammed up against Kate inside the suffocating skin of a pantomime horse, more intimate than they had been since childhood when they shared a room and terrified one another with ghost stories and thrashed each other with pillows.
‘Can’t you find someone else?’ she said.
‘No, I can’t,’ said Kate, with the confidence of two years’ seniority, ‘or I would. Are you driving down?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Lucia was her pride and joy, her very first car, the second-hand Mazda she had bought in the spring, as soon as she finally passed her test. She didn’t go anywhere without Lucia. If possible she would have liked to take Lucia upstairs to bed with her.
‘Well, be careful,’ said Kate, who had passed first time at seventeen. And hung up.
So it was that she came to be driving to Hastings on Christmas Eve with a bootful of presents and a glum expression, like a reluctant Santa who had exchanged his reindeer for something a bit more modern, but was still wishing he could have stayed at home in Lapland with the duvet over his head. She had had Lucia serviced three weeks before, in preparation for the journey, so felt confident enough to do a bit of speeding on the motorway, hoping the police would be too full of goodwill to catch her. She was still enough of a new driver to feel an illicit thrill at breaking the law, however marginally, (seventy-five was normal, eighty was daring and eighty-five was positively wicked) plus a sense of smug self-righteousness at keeping Lucia in mint condition. Coming off the motorway, she noticed the windscreen was rather murky and the wipers didn’t s
eem to be clearing it, so she stopped in the next village and got out of the car, armed with a roll of kitchen paper. Then she noticed she was at a bus stop and virtuously got back in and moved Lucia further up the street. The windscreen was surprisingly hard to clean and seemed covered with gunge, but she persevered.
When she started the engine again, the oil light came on. And stayed on.
Instant panic. This was definitely not supposed to happen. Especially not after a service when Lucia was full to bursting with expensive oil. She got the manual out of the glove compartment to check if she was doing something stupid, something only new drivers in their ignorance might do, but it told her to check the oil level and if it was low not to move the car but to seek help, or oil. She knew all that already.
‘Come on, Lucia,’ she said. ‘You can’t let me down now. Not on Christmas bloody Eve.’
Maybe it was just an electrical fault. Maybe if she turned off the engine and waited and started it again, all would be well. At some level, she still believed in magic. But she tried it and all was definitely not well, there was no miracle, only the oil lamp still glaring malevolently at her. Swearing under her breath she got out, opened the bonnet, pulled out the dip stick, wiped it on the kitchen paper. Then she realised that she wasn’t near enough to a street lamp to see where to plunge it back in, never mind read it when it came out again. She felt very silly. And right at that moment it started to rain.
She looked around for a phonebox but couldn’t see one anywhere. They were like policemen, she thought, never around when you needed one but always lurking when you didn’t. Besides, she would look like a really stupid woman driver if she phoned the AA when what she really needed was a torch. There was nothing else for it. She rang the doorbell of the nearest lighted house.
A man opened the door. He was a few inches taller than she was, slim and muscular. She couldn’t see his face clearly against the light, but he was wearing a rather nice striped jersey and corduroy trousers, and he had the busy, abstracted air of one who has been interrupted in an important task.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she said, hating her image as helpless woman, ‘but could you possibly lend me a torch, just for a minute? I think I’ve run out of oil and I can’t see to check it.’
‘Of course,’ he said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘Come in for a minute while I find one.’
All her mother’s childhood warnings about not talking to strange men, let alone going willingly into their homes, flooded back into her mind. On the other hand, she could hardly expect him to be crouching behind his own front door with a torch between his teeth, waiting for her to ring his bell, and she didn’t want to stand on the step in the rain. So she went in and waited in his hall while he disappeared into the back of the house.
The hall was bright with decorations, festooned with tinsel and holly and hung with balloons. Another Christmas freak, she thought. Not a likely candidate for membership of SAC. She expected a wife and children to leap out at her, but the house was strangely silent.
‘Here we are,’ he said, reappearing with the torch. Now that she saw him clearly for the first time, she had the oddest feeling that she had met him before, although she knew he was a stranger. He was about her own age, with curly brown hair and blue eyes that looked at her keenly but reassuringly, rather like a family doctor. Not at all the mad rapist of her mother’s fantasies. She told herself sternly not to be ridiculous, but the blend of novelty and familiarity made her start to shake inside.
He didn’t give her the torch, but came out with her on to the pavement.
‘Oh, very nice,’ he said when he saw Lucia. ‘They’re good, aren’t they?’
She warmed to his praise and let him hold the torch while she inserted the dipstick. It came out bone dry. There was no oil in Lucia at all.
‘But I only just had her serviced,’ she said, aghast.
‘Maybe your sump plug has fallen out,’ he said hopefully, and to her amazement spreadeagled himself on the wet pavement, heedless of his good jersey, to peer under Lucia’s engine. ‘That’s it, I’m afraid,’ he added, surfacing. ‘There’s a great pool of oil.’ And he shone the torch for her to see.
‘I’ll kill my garage,’ she said. ‘May I use your phone?’
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Come and have a Christmas drink. After all, you won’t be driving. Sorry about that.’
The living-room was a mass of decorations too. Was he doing all this for himself or was he expecting someone? She felt more embarrassed than ever when the AA told her it would be an hour or two before they could come. People were breaking down all over the place, it seemed.
‘Stay as long as you like,’ he said. ‘My friends aren’t arriving till late. It’s nice to have company.’
‘You’ve really got the Christmas spirit,’ she said, looking round.
‘Actually, I hate it,’ he said, ‘but they’ve got children so I thought I should make an effort. It seems pretty pointless on your own, don’t you think?’
Magic words, she thought. She could hardly believe it. If she’d met him at a party she’d be trying to chat him up by now, appear glamorous and interesting instead of silly and helpless with a broken-down car. They were saying such trivial things to each other and yet she had the oddest feeling they were really talking about something else.
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I’ve promised to be the back end of a pantomine horse on Boxing Day, just to please my sister. So it’s really important I get to Hastings tonight. I’ve got to rehearse.’
‘That sounds like a traditional English Christmas.’ He smiled. ‘I’ve forgotten what it’s like. I’ve been working abroad and I only came home six months ago.’ He was staring at her all the time.
‘What do you do?’ she asked politely, conscious now of feeling absurdly comfortable with him, more comfortable than she had felt with any man since Michael, and yet at the same time extremely tense. It was an odd, invigorating ambivalence. Must be my hormones, she thought. I’m out of practice. Perhaps I’m going mad.
‘I’m a physicist,’ he said. ‘I’ve been helping people find oil.’
In her mind she could hear Kate, ever the matchmaker, saying, ‘My God, he sounds perfect, wherever did you find him?’ and herself answering flippantly, ‘Oh, it’s easy if you know how. I just rang his bell.’
‘How ironic,’ she said, too frozen with excitement to flirt.
‘How far did you drive after the light came on?’ he asked, as if he was really interested.
‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think I noticed it right away but maybe it was on before. Not on the motorway but further back down the street when I stopped at the bus stop.’
‘Hey,’ he said, ‘we may be on to something. Hang on, Watson. Maybe it fell out right there. Got shaken loose on the motorway because your garage didn’t tighten it properly and fell out when you stopped. Change of temperature and all that. Why don’t I go and look for it?’
What a terrible idea, she thought, when all I want to do is sit here for as long as it takes the AA to arrive, sit here and get to know you and show you I can be wonderful too when you get to know me. ‘That would be very kind,’ she said faintly.
‘Not at all.’ He got up. ‘A two-legged horse might ruin the pantomime. Besides, I rather fancy myself as a mechanic. Won’t be long. Make yourself at home.’
While he was gone, she studied the room. It had a good, warm atmosphere. Lots of books and records. Honey-coloured walls and rust carpet. Deep comfortable sofas. It was a real home, as if he didn’t mind being alone, no matter what he said. And everywhere the wretched decorations. She didn’t believe he really hated it. Deep down he was a Christmas freak like everyone else and she envied him.
Presently he returned with a smug expression and oil all over his hands. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Right there by the bus stop. I’ve put it back really tight and I’ve put some oil in. Simple. You’ll be okay now.’
He wants to ge
t rid of me, she thought suddenly, with an ache of disappointment. I’m a nuisance. He really wants me out, that’s why he’s doing all this. ‘I can’t thank you enough,’ she said, chilled, and rang the AA to cancel her call, abandoning all fantasies of exchanging names and phone numbers with him, meeting for drinks, meeting for dinner, living happily ever after.
‘It was really nice meeting you,’ he said when she was standing on the step.
‘Happy Christmas,’ she said bitterly. And drove off.
For the rest of the journey she berated herself, first for having the idea that they already knew each other, then for not trusting her instincts and doing something about it. By the time she arrived she had a violent headache and was wondering if she had imagined the whole thing.
‘God, you’re a wimp,’ said Kate when she told her the story. ‘You’ll have to call in on your way back, that’s all. Take him a present. Say you want to thank him properly.’ She laughed the suggestive laugh that had made her the heroine of the fourth form.
‘I couldn’t possibly,’ Laura said, wondering if perhaps she could. ‘He couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’
‘He was trying to impress you, twitbag,’ said Kate. ‘God, that Michael has a lot to answer for. Where’s all your self-esteem?’
Her parents fussed over her, declaring she needed more food, more sea air, more early nights. They still resented her running away to the big city, the bright lights, the unsuitable men. Kate’s children climbed all over her and Kate’s husband carved the turkey and James and Caroline canoodled on the sofa until she felt quite sick with envy. By four o’clock they were all sleepy and full and knee-deep in wrapping paper.
She went for a solitary walk along the sea front to clear her head. The tide was in and wild spray crashed on to the promenade. She loved it here in winter when there were no tourists and the sea could belong to her alone. But in her mind she kept seeing a stranger’s familiar face and a warmly decorated room.
Triangles Page 13