Eventually I gave up, of course, but not until I was ready. After two or three changes of number it became too much effort and besides, I was beginning to feel better, going back to nursing, having the occasional lover. But I felt proud of myself. At least I hadn’t meekly put up with being kicked in the teeth.
When Luke left Millie for Barbara, she scratched his car. She just went out one night and dragged a rusty nail the whole length of his beautiful new convertible parked outside Barbara’s flat. I heard about it all from Luke. We were quite friendly by then. At first we’d had to keep in touch because of the children (plus my absurd fantasy that he might come back to me) and by the time they’d grown up and gone off to college he’d got in the habit of ringing me or dropping in to talk about himself, the way men like to do. When he left Millie, the last splinter of pain came out of my heart and I felt washed clean, vindicated. She was suffering as I had suffered and Luke had proved himself no good to either of us. I laughed when he told me about her revenge. And I thought how much I had missed her over the years. A woman after my own heart, you might say.
Luke sprawled on my sofa and stared at me with that attentive soft-focused look that so many women find beguiling but which really means he hasn’t got his contact lenses in.
‘Barbara’s thrown me out,’ he said. ‘She’s afraid it might be her car next. She thinks I’m a liability.’
‘Barbara sounds like a sensible woman,’ I said.
Luke wasn’t ageing well. He’d put on weight and he was going grey and bald at the same time. Looking at him dispassionately, I thought I’d had the best of him. But there was still the charm and the smile and the look. And he was the girls’ father; there’d always be that bond.
‘I don’t like living on my own,’ he said, stroking the back of my neck. ‘It’s not good for me.’
‘Now’s your chance to practise what you preach,’ I said, removing the hand. ‘Aren’t you always urging your patients to find inner tranquillity without a partner?’
‘That’s why I need one,’ said Luke. ‘To replenish me. I give out so much of myself each day. You know, I really miss family life.’
I thought of all the times he had failed to visit the girls and I had tried to make up excuses for him so they wouldn’t be too disappointed.
‘You may miss it,’ I said, ‘but are you really suited to it?’
‘I made a mess of it last time,’ he said calmly. ‘I’d like a chance to get it right.’
The next time I saw Millie in Sainsbury’s I smiled at her and we ended up going for a long boozy lunch. Her five years with Luke had aged her, I thought, more than my fifteen had aged me, but perhaps having the girls had kept me young. Millie couldn’t have children and Luke had got to her at a time when she was feeling particularly vulnerable because her husband had just died after a long illness. The more we talked and drank, the more forgiving I felt. It was a new sensation, warm and benevolent. I liked it.
‘Scratching the car was a masterstroke,’ I said. It would be nice to be friends again with a woman who displayed such initiative.
‘I wanted to break into the flat and turn all the taps on,’ she said miserably, ‘but I hadn’t the guts.’
‘That would have been magnificent. I wanted to burn down your house.’
‘Those phone calls were amazing.’
We smiled at each other. It all seemed a long time ago. What a lot of fuss about Luke, I thought, ordering another bottle of wine. How flattering for him.
One thing led to another, the way it does, Time the Great Healer did his usual stuff, and after a while I went to work with Millie in her executive catering business. I’d had enough of the NHS and this was much easier work and far better paid.
We had a lovely secretary called Sophie, who charmed all the clients. Our food was pretty good, as it happens, but I think they’d have eaten lukewarm cardboard if Sophie had delivered it. She was twenty-three, with long legs in short skirts, and tousled dark hair, as if she had just got out of bed; she had big dark eyes, and a large mouth with well-developed lips, as if she had been practising French all her life, though her accent was pure Sloane. She was punctual, her typing was good, she put a smile in her voice on the phone, and she never parked the van on a yellow line. In short, she was a paragon and we adored her. Millie even gave her one of Samantha’s kittens. We enjoyed hearing about her various boyfriends in our coffee breaks, too, until one day she came in all starry-eyed and started talking about someone called Luke.
‘Surely not our Luke?’ I said to Millie after Sophie had gone home.
‘I’m afraid so. He’s got an accountant since he went into private practice and we’ve been catering for the accountant. It’s rotten luck.’
This was serious news. This was incest. If Sophie found out, horror of horrors, she might be so embarrassed she’d leave. And if she didn’t find out, Luke might live happily ever after. A dilemma for all of us.
‘I haven’t told her yet,’ Luke admitted. ‘I don’t want to put her off me.’
‘Thanks a lot, Luke,’ I said. ‘Are you ashamed of us?’
‘I think I’m in love,’ said Luke, sounding dreamy and smug.
So for a little while we all colluded to keep Sophie ignorant. But of course it had to come out eventually and when it did her reaction surprised us all. We had reckoned without the habits of Sophie’s class. She thought it was funny. Or, to use her exact words, ‘a hoot’. It reminded her of a sitcom on television. Apparently Sophie’s parents and step-parents had divorced and remarried so many times she thought having an extended family was the natural way to live. To Sophie the fact that we had both loved Luke and remained friends was additional proof that he was the wonderful person she knew him to be. The fact that he had left us belonged to the past. When she met him he was alone and that was all that mattered. She hadn’t had to steal him from anyone.
Luke starts talking about marriage and children. I wonder how long it will last this time. Will it be five years, ten years, fifteen years before he does another runner, or is Sophie the true love he seems to think she is? He talks about her tenderly, in poetic phrases, but I have heard it all before, about me, about Millie, about Barbara. I should stop listening. I should tell him to go away. Instead I watch his mouth. Is it possible I am something as ordinary and humiliating as jealous? I don’t want him back so why don’t I want him to be happy? Am I really thinking of Sophie’s welfare and her future as a single parent? Maybe I’m wrong and Luke has actually changed. But I believe a philandering man only comes to rest when he runs out of steam, whichever woman he happens to be with at the time. My father, for instance, stayed with his third wife mainly because he was eighty-two. Luke is only forty-three. He looks to me as if he has a lot of mileage left.
Luke’s mouth goes on moving in praise of Sophie. I wonder if I would feel more charitable if I had remarried, if Millie had remarried. I wonder why balding greying middle-aged overweight rich charming selfish men are so much in demand while thin glamorous middle-aged solvent embittered women are not. I think I know but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or that nothing can be done about it. Sophie is scarcely older than my daughters. Luke’s daughters. They like Sophie but they are startled at the idea of her as their step-mother.
Luke books one of those ritzy package holidays to Barbados. A sort of pre-wedding honeymoon. Sophie looks up catteries in the yellow pages.
‘This is a crisis,’ I say to Millie. ‘Desperate measures are called for.’
So Millie and I park outside Sophie’s flat, waiting for the kitten to emerge. Millie has her doubts about the plan and keeps making feeble objections. But I am adamant. A little healthy shared anxiety will be good for Luke and Sophie. It will test their love. Why wait till they reach the labour ward? Why wait till they reach the Caribbean?
The kitten eventually comes out of the cat flap. It’s quite big by now, nearly an adult cat, with wonderful black and orange markings. It roams in the garden, teasing us, climbs tre
es, stalks birds, strolls along the top of the fence, jumps down on to the pavement beside us. Millie tries to grab it but it skitters away from her.
‘We shouldn’t be doing this,’ Millie says.
‘Go away, Millie,’ I say. ‘Go and mind the store. Make sure Sophie doesn’t come home early. You’re too softhearted for this kind of work.’
It takes me several days and a parking ticket to capture the cat, but eventually it gets used to me and makes the mistake of rolling around in the sun and letting me tickle its tummy. I have it in the cat basket so fast it hardly has time to scratch me it’s so surprised, and I zoom off home to imprison it in the spare room two floors up where there’s no chance of Luke hearing it mewing if he drops in unexpectedly, where it leads an indolent pampered life like a concubine in a harem with me a devoted handmaid bringing it food and milk and litter trays. It miaows a bit but on the whole it accepts the privileges of imprisonment graciously. It sleeps a lot. It plays with ping-pong balls. It rips up the carpet. I get quite fond of it. At night, secure from interruptions, I even let it curl up on my bed.
Tension is mounting, as the newspapers say. Sophie talks about her loss to Millie, who nearly weakens at the sight of her tear-stained face, and Luke talks to me, quite immune to tears. He can’t believe that Sophie would cancel a holiday because of a missing cat: it either comes back or it doesn’t, regardless of Sophie’s whereabouts. Let’s be logical about this, he says: if it never returns, God forbid, is Sophie never to go on holiday? How can waiting around for a cat be more important than going away with him? Sophie on the other hand can’t believe he would expect her to go away not knowing what has happened to the cat: how could she enjoy herself unsure if Tabitha is alive or dead? What if she came back during the holiday and found nobody there? She might go away for ever. Each is beginning to question the depth of the other’s love. They are seeing each other with new eyes.
The holiday is cancelled. The money would not be refundable: the ritzy travel agents don’t consider a missing cat sufficient reason for an insurance claim, but Luke of course is well placed for a fake medical certificate so all is well financially. They can always book another holiday. But they don’t. Something has changed. Something has been spoilt.
Millie is stricken with guilt. ‘We shouldn’t have done it,’ she says.
‘Nonsense,’ I say. ‘One day she’ll be grateful. Did you want Sophie to end up with Luke?’
Millie says no, but we should have let her find out for herself. I say nothing. I release the cat into Sophie’s garden and it bolts through the cat flap. Next day Sophie comes to the office with a radiant face.
Time passes. There is a curious atmosphere, too amorphous to dissect, a message in the ether, that somehow Luke and Sophie suspect we had something to do with the cat’s disappearance and yet they can’t or won’t accuse us. It is too improbable, too unseemly. Or perhaps they are embarrassed by their own behaviour. Sophie’s manner in the office is reserved; Luke’s voice on the telephone is cool.
After a while Luke and Sophie separate. Sophie gives in her notice: she says she is going to live in the country near her assorted relatives. Millie and I feel sad. We know we have come to the end of something important and the office will not be the same without her. Presently we decide perhaps we should not go on in business together. I think I shall take up agency nursing for a change.
More time passes. Difficult time. The girls go to visit Luke. They like his new wife. Apparently she is very pretty and great fun. They go to her twenty-first birthday party and they say the baby is gorgeous. They keep in touch with Sophie, too. They tell me she is very happy; she has married a vet.
Luke doesn’t visit me any more. It’s probably all for the best.
Memento Vitae
Lionel reminds Naomi of her father: silent, warm, elusive. That is partly why she loves him; she knows that. He is tall and grey and heavy, good to hug, solid as a tree. He smiles down at her when she hugs him and kisses the top of her head. He looks as if he cares about her then, but she wouldn’t presume he does. She has never heard him use the word love and she has been careful not to use it herself. But their bodies seem to understand each other.
When they have arranged to meet for lunch she watches from the balcony to see him arrive. The waiting is part of the pleasure. Earlier in the day she has been out to buy smoked salmon and chicken tikka, raspberries and cream. She has never found shopping so erotic before. She is drunk with the knowledge that she is doing all this for him and presently he will be climbing the stairs to her flat and she will be able to touch him. She smiles at strangers as she walks round the shop, gathering up all his favourite things and feeling her body making itself ready for his arrival. It is only just possible to contain such happiness: a few drops more, she feels, and it might spill over into madness.
She hopes he will be late and he often is, giving her more time to look forward to her treat. If he is going to be very late, he telephones. This is an extra pleasure, to hear his voice again, casual and apologetic, as if he were an ordinary person and they had a relationship with a future. Sometimes, rarely, he has to cancel, and even that has its merits, as he then has to rebook, prolonging her time of anticipation. Some friends tell her this is unhealthy and masochistic, but she thinks it’s sensible, making the most of everything she is given. Other friends envy her for having a high which must, she thinks, be very similar to one induced by drugs. A hit or a fix. She isn’t sure of her terminology; she is a bit out of date. But she knows about love. That doesn’t seem to change. Only now there are books written about how to cure it, groups formed to support you while you learn to love moderately, without risk, making sure you get loved back in equal measure before you hazard yourself.
He arrives frowning, with some remark about the traffic or the weather. He is an angry person. She can feel the enormity of her smile splitting her face: she is smiling hugely, like an idiot. She is smiling for both of them. She is so joyful, her smile is out of control. What does he make of such a smile?
He walks in, past her. He doesn’t kiss her or touch her. If she waits long enough he will, but often she can’t wait and she goes to him and puts her arms round him, needing to touch him; she puts her head against his chest, opens his shirt, kisses his fur and breathes in that special scent of him. Pheromones. She has read about them. Sheer animal attraction, primitive, atavistic, the chemistry that makes for instant mating.
He returns the hug. He looks down at her and smiles at last and they say hullo. The back of his shirt is wet with sweat. Occasionally, he has an erection then and there, and they go straight to bed. But usually he doesn’t: he is tired and irritable and wants a drink, lunch, time to unwind and dump his hospital morning. She has to let go of him by sheer willpower before he pulls away from her. She never gets enough of him but he, she fears, gets far too much of her. An unequal bargain. She feels like a puppy wagging its tail at an indifferent master, jumping up, licking his hand. She hates feeling like that but she doesn’t know how to stop.
He talks about patients and administration while she pours him wine and prepares the food. He tells her he has fucked up his life: he has had too many children and he pays too much maintenance. It is always a shock when he says something important: usually he uses words to conceal rather than reveal. Over two years he has only told her a few things that really matter. She longs to talk to him, to listen to him, but feels an enormous pressure against it, blocking her best endeavours. He has a prickly self-protective casing around him. She is embracing a hedgehog. He is a crab, an armadillo: he won’t let her touch his soft centre but keeps her outside, banging helplessly on his hard shell with her small useless fists.
He fills her eyes. The pleasure of having him in her space, of being able to look at him and touch him sometimes makes her deaf so that she has difficulty hearing what he says, although she longs to hear it. She tells him this, but he doesn’t respond. Sometimes he seems so joyless she wonders why he is with her at all. ‘
I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t like it,’ he says. Whatever that means. His idea of a compliment perhaps. In bed she presses her hands very flat against his furry body so that she can touch as much of him as possible while he sleeps. She knows she is obsessed but that knowledge doesn’t make the obsession go away.
In restaurants, on the rare occasions when they go out and are therefore unable to make love, she can’t stop herself touching him, stroking him, yet she worries that all this physical adulation may be cloying and oppressive. ‘D’you like me touching you or do you think, Oh God, not again?’ she asks him, genuinely wanting to know.
‘I like it,’ he says without emotion.
Once he comes round to see her and they sit for an hour talking of hotels in America while he holds her hand actively, fingers moving, clasping and reclasping, their hands making love while their words say nothing at all. Then he leaves for his next appointment. On another occasion she asks him if he would have liked to make love that day. ‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ he says, ‘but I was conscious of the time.’
When they met he told her his wife was going to leave him but she hasn’t and this is never mentioned now. He has had three wives and seven children. He earns a lot of money but he is always in debt. He doesn’t like her to sympathise with him: he prefers to blame himself for everything.
At the beginning he made love to her totally, with hands and tongue and cock, making her come over and over again, seeming to care about her coming. Now he gets into bed and pulls the duvet over his head; she gets in beside him and he puts his arm round her and sleeps. She lies there listening to his heavy breathing and watching their time together tick away. Talking time, if they could ever talk. Lovemaking time. He is so tired. He is exhausted. He needs sleep more than he needs her. He needs oblivion.
No matter how much she loves him, she can’t make him love her. It doesn’t work that way. She understands that: there have been people in the past who loved her, whom she could not love. She knows too that the person who loves gains more than the person who is loved. So she feels more sorry for him than for herself. She is richer; she can afford to be generous.
Triangles Page 20