The Next Best Thing

by Sarah Long

  ‘Thank you, yes,’ she said, ‘I’ve lost a contact lens.’

  ‘Bloody nuisance, aren’t they? I’m always losing mine.’ He lowered himself beside her and ran a hand across the step with surprising finesse. She noticed he wore big cufflinks, another hangover from the yuppie Eighties, and that his tie was decorated with miniature stags’ heads.

  ‘I can’t see it,’ he said, ‘but in my experience they don’t usually get as far as the floor. Let me check your face.’

  Still crouching beside her, he put his hands on either side of her head and stared intently, clinically into her eyes. His fingers felt warm and comforting as they pressed against her temples.

  ‘Look up . . . now look down. Now try looking to one side.’ Jane followed his directions, rolling her eyes like a mad woman being exorcised.

  ‘You don’t look like someone who wears lenses,’ she said, treating him to a view of the whites of her eyes as she swivelled the pupils up into her skull.

  ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘You don’t look vain enough.’

  He laughed. ‘I’ll take that as a compliment, though I probably shouldn’t. and we were reading Lord of the Flies at school. I got fed up with being called Piggy, after the one who broke his glasses. You know how cruel kids can be.’

  ‘Yes. I got mine because everyone said I looked like Olive from On The Buses.’

  ‘Hang on, I can sec it. Right down in the corner. Just hold it there and I’ll see if I can nudge it out.’ He applied the lightest flick with his little finger, and the lense dropped out into his palm.

  Jane looked down at it, a fragile semicircle of grey plastic lying in his steady open hand. She licked her finger and picked it up, slotting it hack into her eye.

  They got up and faced each other. He stood head and shoulders above her, but Jane thought the Piggy label was unfair. He was big-boned, that was all, which people sometimes used as a euphemism for fat, but in his case it meant just that. Big-boned, with sandy hair and those kind brown eyes.

  ‘Well, that was all a bit Brief Encounter, wasn’t it?’ she said breezily. ‘Or should I say Brève Rencontre, as we’re in the French Institute?’

  ‘You speak French?’

  ‘Yes, it’s my job. I’m a translator.’

  ‘I see.’

  He looked genuinely interested. Surely he should be moving on now, he must have a job to go to, dressed like that. You wouldn’t bother to put on red braces just to sit in a darkened cinema.

  He made no attempt to leave, so Jane felt obliged to carry on talking.

  ‘Do you often go to the cinema? During the day, I mean. On your own?’

  Why was she trying to make out he was some kind of pervert? He was only doing the same as her.

  ‘Never.’ He shook his head. ‘But I had a lunch cancelled and I suddenly just fancied it. A Bout de Souffle is one of my favourite Godards.’

  Jane couldn’t help smiling at the idea of this ungainly Englishman being a disciple of the French New Wave. He was about as Continental as roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

  ‘Me too,’ she said.

  There was a moment’s pause, then they both began speaking at the same time.

  ‘Well, thanks for your help . . .’

  ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to . . .’

  They both stopped and laughed. This was ludicrous, they were like tongue-tied teenagers.

  ‘I was going to suggest that we might . . . have a coffee,’ said Rupert. ‘To celebrate the lens and its nondisappearance.’

  If she said no, that would be that. He would never see her again and life would go on as usual, he’d go back to his computer and Richard’s booming voice across the room. You couldn’t go organising your life around chance encounters, pretending it was like the movies. He had Lydia, after all, and this woman was nothing special anyway, you might even say she was rather plain. He almost hoped she’d say no.

  ‘All right,’ she said.

  It was only because he had been kind to her. Considerate, nice manners, something Will couldn’t always be relied on for. It wasn’t that she fancied him or anything, good God, hardly! Definitely not her type, in fact about as far as you could get from her type. Those awful socks, and the soul-destroying pinstripe suit with the maroon tie, like a caricature city gent, it was a miracle he wasn’t wearing a bowler hat. What on earth had made her agree? She had to pick up Liberty from school, too. Still, a quick coffee wouldn’t do any harm, would it?

  They left the French Institute and crossed Harrington Gardens to walk down Bute Street, a narrow road that pretended it was in Paris, with its French bookshop and patisserie and a café where Jane said they served the best cappuccinos. Le Raison d’Etre, it was called, and Rupert wondered aloud as they went in whether they would have to take part in the kind of ‘café philo’ discussion that the French were so keen on.

  ‘I hope not,’ laughed Jane, though she thought it might be less embarrassing to have an impersonal debate on a finer point of philosophy than to make small talk with this man whose name she didn’t even know. What if she bumped into a friend, how on earth would she introduce him? As ‘Piggy’? Fancy him telling her that, it hardly cast him in a flattering light, but ex-public schoolboys were all like that in her experience. So hung up on their formative years in prep school that they clung to their nicknames. They didn’t seem to move on, like normal people.

  He pulled out a chair for her and they ordered two regular cappuccinos. Jane realised she hadn’t told him her name. ‘I’m Jane by the way,’ she said.

  Plain Jane, he thought. Which she was, sort of, or maybe hers was simply a cleaner, less-made-up look. She didn’t look as well groomed as Lydia, with her freckly face, regular, well-spaced features and medium colouring. But when he looked at her he felt uneasy and his throat was dry.

  He coughed. ‘Your jacket reminds me of the tablecloth on the kitchen table of my house in France ‘

  Jane pulled at her sleeve dismissively. ‘Why, this old thing?’ she said, in a Southern Belle voice, ‘I’ve had this since gingham was in fashion last time round. Where’s your house?’

  ‘Near Marseille.’

  ‘How lovely. Do you love it?’

  ‘I do.’

  They remained silent, contemplating how much he loved his house in France.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, ‘that was a very pretentious thing to say, about my tablecloth. It’s just that it really did remind me.’

  ‘It’s OK.’

  She smiled at him. Her smile was nice; open, a bit shy. He smiled back at her.

  ‘I wish I was there now, actually,’ he said. ‘I was just thinking about it before I went to sec that film.’

  ‘I’d love to live in France,’ said Jane. ‘Or Spain. Or deep in the English countryside. I’m afraid I’m one of those tragic Londoners who dreams constantly of escape. My partn— some people think it’s pitiful, like going after some kind of never-never land. What do you think?’

  I think you’re beautiful.

  ‘I think . . . It’s nice to have both. If you can. But it’s not essential. Home is where the heart is. And other cliches.’

  He lightened up. ‘So, tell me about being a translator. It sounds very glamorous. Are you one of those people who sit around talking into headphones at international summits? In those conference rooms that look like space labs?’

  ‘No, you’re thinking of interpreters. I’m just a nerdy anorak who works at home on my computer. At the moment I’m translating a book about French bridges for an American publisher. I’m just on the chapter about the Pont de Normandie.’

  There, that should put him off. Though strangely enough, he seemed to be gagging for more information. Claimed to have a degree in civil engineering and had a special interest in bridges. She could just imagine Will rolling his eyes in mock boredom when she told him. If she told him. He might even lie down on the floor and pretend to go to sleep, which was his favourite jokey response to something he
found truly, deeply boring.

  But the odd thing was that when she talked to Rupert about bridges, she actually found it interesting. She had got so used to her work being considered unworthy of discussion that she had forgotten how absorbing a new subject became when you were working on it. You became an overnight expert, until you moved on to the next book.

  When they had finished their coffee, Jane saw that she had cut it much too fine for the school run and stood up brusquely, quickly pulling on her coat.

  ‘I’m sorry, I really must dash,’ she said. ‘Thanks for the coffee and the lens and everything.’

  He followed her out onto the pavement. If he didn’t act now, he would never see her again. But what could he do? He couldn’t ask her out or anything. He was engaged to Lydia.

  She was running up Bute Street now, on her way to the car park. ‘I quite often go to the Institute on Fridays,’ she called back to him over her shoulder. ‘I’ll definitely be there next week. Louis Malle. Au Revoir les Enfants.’

  He smiled in relief. Next Friday then. He waved to her, then found himself confronted by an angry waitress. In his confusion he appeared to have done a runner. He tipped her five pounds, and went off to find a taxi.

  Jane switched on the engine of the Vauxhall, willing it to stutter into life. She should be just in time for Liberty. Her new friend from the Institute had no idea she had a daughter. He knew nothing about her except what she did for a living. And that she liked going alone to the cinema, and would love to leave London if she could. And he would know how it felt to cradle her head between his hands on the stairs of the French Institute. She was sure he would be there next week, she was ninety-nine per cent sure of that. She didn’t think she would bother to mention it to Will. They weren’t joined at the hip, after all. They weren’t even married.

  FOUR

  Sunday Brunch at the Bluebird Café on the Kings Road was Lydia’s idea, not Rupert’s. He couldn’t understand why brunch had become so fashionable in England, because to his mind it was an American invention best practised in its country of origin. Brunch was perfect in New York. The city was so ugly that you had to spend all your leisure time in restaurants. You took refuge from the brown streets by diving into some joint to order sickly combinations of skinny blueberry muffins with bacon and maple syrup and banana smoothies. But in London, it didn’t really work. It was almost sad to see Brits trying to be like Americans. What happened to a few pints of warm bitter followed by steak and kidney pie? Because brunch was only lunch by another name and was always served at lunchtime, in spite of its pretensions to be seen as a late breakfast.

  Lydia shared none of his reservations. She polished off her eggs Benedict with rocket side-salad and ordered another glass of buck’s fizz, glancing round with satisfaction at the tables filled with successful people pretending to read the Sunday papers. Obviously, they were only pretending, because everyone knows it is impossible to read a broadsheet newspaper over a small table laden with glasses and plates, even if the plates did only contain ‘brunch’.

  ‘Well, this is the life!’ she said brightly, raising her glass to her secret fiance who was sitting across the table, looking stout in a pair of jeans that had a horrid ironed crease running down the front of the legs. It was the Filipino maid who did them that way, and Rupert couldn’t be bothered to instruct her otherwise.

  She lowered her voice and leaned confidentially across to him, to add sotto voce, ‘Bye-bye Balham, hallo Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea,’ then winked to show Rupert she was only joking, that of course she would be marrying him even if he lived in Streatham. Though it was a shame he didn’t look more like the Italian at the next table who was right now giving her a very dirty look indeed beneath his Enrique Iglesias hair. His jeans were half the width of Rupert’s, and seemed to be moulded to his energetic lower body, suggesting that if you were to remove them, you would be confronted by a fabulous Renaissance statue in rippling hot bronze. For two seconds she met his eyes to acknowledge that they could have great wild sex together, then she turned her attention back to her boyfriend. The good thing about being thirty-seven was that you were grown up. Ten years ago she might have hopped tables, but now she had clearer objectives and she was in it for the long term. Rupert stirred two sachets of sugar into his large cappuccino and pulled his navy Guernsey sweater off over his head. He’d had it twenty years and it didn’t owe him a penny.

  ‘Bloody hot in here,’ he said, his sandy hair dishevelled and flattened over his pink face that had got pinker with the heat and the Bloody Marys he’d ordered to soften the effect of last night’s dinner party. ‘You seem bright as a button,’ he added, ‘considering what time you got to bed.’

  One of last night’s guests had been a food critic, so Lydia had taken care to spend as much money as possible on the ingredients, notching up £13 for a loaf of bread from the bread shop on Walton Street, £48 for a fruit tart and an impressive £76 on a piece of organic beef. There had only been one sticky moment, when the food critic had wandered out to the kitchen to help her and found her taking the meat out of the oven while wearing a shower cap to keep the smell out of her hair. He had shared his mirth with the other guests, and Lydia had felt foolish, swearing never again to stage a party without the help of the sexy Brazilian butler who was listed in this month’s magazine as the ‘must-have dinner party accessory’.

  Rupert had not enjoyed the evening. He had felt like the stooge, the spectre at the feast. Lydia had once told him that the ideal proportions at a dinner were two shouters to five listeners, but last night had thrown up six shouters and just one listener, in the form of solid Rupert, the banker, who had singularly failed to sing for his supper, though at least he was paying for it. Bored by the conversation, he had sloped off to bed as early as possible to watch the end of Parkinson. From down the corridor he could hear the squealing laughter of what sounded like Lydia multiplied by six. Or rather, six times the worst part of Lydia, which didn’t take into account her many redeeming qualities.

  And now, the morning after, Rupert looked across the table of the Bluebird Café for evidence of those redeeming qualities. He was partially reassured. Lydia looked terrific, and he was not a high-minded hypocrite who pretended that looks didn’t matter. Her rich auburn hair was a more intense version of his own reddish blond, and he hoped that any children they had would inherit it. She had the kind of sex appeal that turned heads. Even now he was aware of that good-looking chap at the next table giving her the eye. He liked that, it made him feel he was getting better than he deserved, better than the tubby, good-natured wife with a Sloaney moon-face that you might expect him to have by his side.

  ‘What do you want to do today, Lyd?’ he asked. ‘Shall we go and look at the mummies in the British Museum?’

  There was something about Sundays in London that made him restless. You needed to go somewhere, feel you had done something, otherwise they could be strangely unsatisfying. He would rather be pottering around his country estate, but that was let out. Or else he’d like to be planting some English roses in front of his house in France, but it was too far to go for a weekend.

  Lydia rolled her eyes. ‘“There’s many a poor bespectacled sod,”’ she quoted at him, ‘“Prefers the British Museum to God.” Varied couplets. W. H. Auden.’

  And she was well read, too. Mustn’t forget that on the plus side.

  ‘Shall we do God instead, then,’ he asked with a smile, ‘score a lew churches?’

  Lydia made a yawning gesture, patting her hand prettily in front of her mouth. ‘Darling, you surely know by now that I infinitely prefer Mammon, and luckily for me, Sunday is now just another shopping day.’

  She whipped the scarlet notebook out of her handbag and his heart sank, He hadn’t noticed her pick it up on their way out of the flat.

  ‘I want to take you round a few interiors shops. Get a feel for how you see the refurb.’

  Rupert sat back sulkily, and Lydia noticed how he got a heavy
jowly look when he didn’t get his way.

  ‘I’ve told you, Lydia,’ he said, ‘I really don’t mind. I leave it entirely to you, as long as I get to keep the sofa. But please don’t make me join in. Especially not on a Sunday. Can’t we enjoy ourselves instead?’

  ‘But we are enjoying ourselves. Making plans. Nestbuilding, showing the world how we see our lives showcased. I don’t need to tell you that interior design is the new sex.’

  ‘What’s wrong with the old sex?’ asked Rupert. ‘Stood us in good stead for thousands of years, hasn’t it?’

  The Italian at the next table looked up again, his nostrils flaring at the mention of sex: he could clearly smell it at five hundred metres.

  ‘Fine, if you’d like us all to still be sitting around in caves. If we don’t care about how our homes look, we might as well sweep away centuries of civilisation.’

  Rupert sighed and called for the bill. ‘All right then, but just for an hour. Then I want to go home and watch the match.’

  ‘Fair enough. Anyway, I’m off to that school reunion later, so you’ll be able to slob out in front of the telly as much as you want. Now, my theme for this afternoon’s tour is that Colour is Back. I’m thinking of a move away from post-minimalism. I’m thinking eclectic, creative rejection of global blandness.’

  She struck an earnest pose and Rupert laughed in spite of himself.

  ‘And I am thinking that it all sounds deeply boring,’ he said, pulling out his wallet.