The Pretence

by Linus Peters

  “Juliana! Calm down!” I begged, but I knew it was futile.

  She managed to wrench herself free, swivelling round, getting in another kick. Still no one in the bar made any kind of move, as if they were just as shocked as I was. I mean, if it had been a man, they would’ve waded straight in there. As it was a woman, they didn’t seem to have a clue what to do.

  Finally, a couple of men who’d been playing the trivia machine, ran over and grabbed her, the barman coming out from behind the bar to help.

  “Leave me alone! Get off me, you fucking bastards!” Juliana screamed at them.

  I can’t tell you how sordid it all seemed; them finally restraining her whilst she continued to scream and swear, even spitting at us a couple of times. When they realised that she wasn’t going to calm down, that their warnings counted for nothing, they dragged her outside and left her there, slamming the door and leaning on it when she attempted to force her way back in.

  “I should hang about in here for a while if I were you,” said one of them to me.

  The other laughed uneasily, like he couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed, that it had disturbed him more than he cared to admit.

  “Are you okay?” Frances asked.

  “Yes ...Think so,” I said, gently pressing my ribs, suspecting at least one of them was cracked.

  She gave a long sigh of relief. “Jesus.”

  I nodded my head dazedly. “Do you think I should go out?”

  Frances turned and stared and I realised how odd that sounded.

  “No!” she told me.

  “It’s my fault,”

  “Simon! Are you serious?”

  In the end, I agreed with her, though whether that was because I was afraid what Juliana might do, or because I simply couldn’t bear to see how much distress I’d caused, I don’t know.

  God, I was a fool. She must have had her suspicions and decided to follow me. Probably in a cab. Whilst I’d been blithely driving along thinking about nothing but my rendezvous with Frances, Juliana had been right behind me, consumed by thoughts of betrayal. Apparently she’d been in the bar for some time, watching us, waiting for her chance, walking up to Frances as soon as she was alone.

  “Hello. I’m Juliana. Simon’s live-in lover. Would you mind telling me what the fuck you two are doing?”

  We gave it more than an hour. Frances having to phone her friend at home and compound our disgrace by telling her the truth. I drove her back in total silence. In fact, I don’t think either of us said more than a couple of dozen words from the time Juliana was thrown out of the pub.

  “Will you be all right?” she asked, as we pulled up.

  I couldn’t help but glance in my rear-vision mirror to check we hadn’t been followed. I was that much on edge. “Yes.”

  “Maybe you should call the police?”

  I shook my head. “I have to take responsibility.”

  “Not for that, you don’t.”

  I didn’t comment, just kissed her on the cheek and said goodnight, both of us feeling somehow tainted, that this was a very bad way to resume a relationship.

  When I arrived home, the flat was in total darkness. I let myself in the front door of the building and slowly climbed the stairs, conscious that even the fact that there were no police in evidence was a relief to me.

  As the lock to my door gave way, I pushed it right back on its hinges till it finally collided with the wall. I mean, I’ll admit it, I was scared.

  I switched on the hall light, entering slowly and warily. Everything was quiet, a seemingly eerie silence that made me wonder if she was waiting for me somewhere.

  I checked the sitting room first, again pushing the door right back, waiting for a moment, then tentatively entering. Flicking on every light switch I came across, illuminating the place, trying to make it as bright and shadow-free as possible.

  As I entered the bedroom, I thought about how she’d got her scars, what she did all those years ago, and wondered if maybe she’d repeated herself? But there was no sad corpse weeping blood out onto my bed. Juliana had gone and taken all her things with her.

  Sometimes it’s so hard to go on. To resume your normal day to day life when you feel you’ve done something so bad you’ll never get that stain or ache out of your insides. For several days I couldn’t even bring myself to have much in the way of contact with Frances. Just the briefest of conversations over the phone. And as for my writing, pretending enthusiasm for yet another chunk of metal and glass propped up on rubber, well, forget it.

  I did go into work - it was a welcome sanctuary from all the many memories of Juliana in the flat - but stayed in my office and barely said a word to anyone.

  The first day Luca politely accepted my explanation that I thought I had flu or something coming on, but after a couple more days of my shadow-like presence, and repeatedly finding me slumped across my desk staring into space, he couldn’t keep quiet any longer.

  “Is everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said, sitting upright, doing my best to make an instant recovery.

  “Sure?”

  “Mm.”

  He nodded his head, but made no move to leave. “Simon, I hope I’m wrong but .. that looks a bit like the face of someone who’s been dumped.”

  “Huh,” I grunted ironically.

  “Am I right?”

  “In a way. I’ve gone back to Frances.”

  “Great,” he said, though obviously still confused by my mood. “That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Probably.”

  “Of course it is.”

  For a moment I couldn’t bring myself to speak, just watching my fingers click and unclick my pen. “It was just so bloody messy ... God. Why would you do that to anyone? Especially to someone who loves you.”

  Luca gave a sort of helpless yet philosophical shrug. “She’ll be all right,” he reassured me, ignoring my instant grunt of denial. “Probably back in Amsterdam by now.”

  He waited but I couldn’t raise myself to comment.

  “Does she know anyone else here?” he asked.

  “Don’t think so.”

  “Well then.“

  Again he paused, obviously wanting to say more but not being sure how to approach it.

  “It’s for the best, Simon. Really. I mean, Juliana was something else. No one could miss the attraction, but the excitement of madness is a short-lived one. After a while it just becomes wearing and tedious.”

  I nodded my head, though I wasn’t really listening, let alone agreeing.

  “Dr Luca recommends a bottle of Barolo and the same beautiful woman every evening,” he said, turning to go. “Soon have you feeling better.”

  I smiled weakly, fearing he thought I was being a little ridiculous. .

  “Oh, by the way,” he said, hesitating at the door, “I keep forgetting, Charlie said you could use his fancy new lap-top while he’s away.”

  I grunted without enthusiasm, the thought of any kind of new technology being forced upon me always an intimidating one, let alone at the moment.

  “Might as well,” Luca said. “It’s just sitting in his office.”

  “How is he?” I asked.

  “Who knows?” he replied. “I’m getting very worried.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought he’d be back by now.”

  “Told me ‘very soon”, I said, remembering our phone call.

  “Me, too. Almost three weeks ago! ... Maybe we should go and check on him sometime?”

  I didn’t say anything. Knowing Charlie, that didn’t sound like such a good idea.

  Luca shrugged, then turned to go. “By the way, did you get your key back?” he asked, almost as an afterthought, and just as he was about to disappear down the corridor.

  “What?”

  “From Juliana?”

  I stared at him stupidly for a moment, then gave a long sigh, grabbing the Yellow Pages and looking up locksmiths.

  The following weekend
, not having seen Frances since that awful night in the pub, and knowing we had to somehow get past the memory, I invited her for a day out to Brighton.

  To be honest, it’s not my favourite place. It seems a slightly uneasy blend of cool Londoners-on-Sea and dilapidated Victoriana. And call me a traditionalist, but I like my beaches made of sand, not something that looks like it’s waiting to be carted away to be used in the construction of a nearby motorway. But sometimes you just need that wind that blows off the sea, the one that’s travelled thousands of miles without being sullied by countries or people. To let it sweep right through you and clear a space for something new to grow.

  It seemed to work, too. Despite being unseasonably cold, and the two of us being almost the only ones clattering across the beach, just to be in the presence of that grey heaving body of water noticeably relaxed us. We spent the best part of the afternoon just sitting there, throwing pebbles into the oncoming waves, searching for interesting ones, awarding them to each other for dubious acts of distinction.

  “And this truly magnificent pebble, plundered from the very vaults of the ancient pharaohs, I award to Frances Lock to go with the title, ‘Best Black Ass in a Non-Foreign Category’,” I said, slightly overdoing the humour.

  She took her prize, studied it for a split-second, then tossed it into the sea.

  “Hey!” I protested, grabbing her, a brief struggle ensuing. “Go and get that.”

  “Give it back to the fairies,” she said. “You colonial powers and your plundered goods.”

  “Pharaohs, you ignorant savage!”

  “Oh.”

  A cool wind accompanied the incoming waves and we went into a clinch to protect our mutual warmth, me wincing for a moment when she disturbed, what an x-ray had confirmed as, a cracked rib.

  “Why is this beach all pebbles anyway?” she asked, squirming around as if she’d lost all feeling in that recently decorated derriere.

  “It’s new. Come back in five thousand years, when it’s all ground down, and it’ll be like lying on the sleepy dust of angels.”

  “Oh. Look at this,” she said, ignoring my nonsense and holding up a pebble that, apart from being a little more elongated, looked more or less like any other.

  “Yes! A slightly squashed pebble.”

  “A genuine Stone-Age axe head,” she informed me.

  “Rubbish!”

  “It is.”

  “How do you know?”

  “It’s written on the bottom.”

  “Thank you,” I said, grabbing it from her and repeating her earlier action by, throwing it into the sea.

  “Talking of bottoms,” she said, “isn’t there a nudist beach around here?”

  The two of us gazed all round, the thought of those naked people, their smelly asses sitting on the pebbles, instantly overwhelming us.

  “Ughhh!” we both chimed, jumping to our feet.

  “Are you sure that was an axe head?” I asked, as we hurried away.

  She screamed in protest and gave me an almighty shove, pushing me over, and I chased after her, grabbing her by the arm and trying to drag her into the sea.

  I mean, pretty standard stuff, I’d be the first to admit. Put any couple on a beach, anywhere in the world, and if they’ve got any childishness about them, at some point he’ll try to throw her into the water and she’ll start screaming. Christ knows why. Must be some sort of left over pre-historic courtship ritual. However, it was significant. And though neither of us actually said anything, I think we both knew it was starting to happen. We were slowly casting off our shadows, discharging our guilt, beginning to recapture the happiness we’d shared all those years ago.

  We decided to go into the city and stroll round the Lanes area, browsing through the many quaint shops, the odd gallery, and later lingering over coffee. To be honest, I was feeling a little tired. Or maybe it wasn’t tiredness? Maybe it was just the fact that, for the first time in what seemed like forever, I felt completely at ease.

  “Do you know something?” she said, staring absently out the window at the week-enders meandering slowly by.

  I gestured to the girl behind the counter, silently mouthing that we wanted the bill. “What?”

  “One of the reasons why I didn’t come back to you sooner was because I didn’t want someone else to pay for my stupidity.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I didn’t think it was fair to risk us doing exactly what we’ve done.”

  “Oh,” I said, knowing that, as much as I wanted to avoid this subject, there was more that needed to come out.

  “And if I’d known it was someone like Juliana.....”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure I would’ve come back,” she said, ignoring my expression of dismissal. “You said you loved her,” she reminded me.

  I shook my head. “Yes, but ... I didn’t. Whatever I felt for Juliana, it wasn’t love. I mean, looking back on it ... it was kind of sick.”

  She went silent for a minute, again gazing out the window, but was still plainly troubled.

  “I feel sorry for her. Also, ” she added, “a touch intimidated.”

  “Why?”

  She made a face as if to indicate that was obvious. “Are you sure you’ve done the right thing?”

  I have to admit, it had crossed my mind a couple of times - in the car on the way down, walking along the beach - that until only a month or so ago I might’ve been doing and saying almost exactly the same things with a different person. Yet so much had happened in that month. I couldn’t believe Frances was feeling insecure, even for a moment.

  “Are you crazy?” I asked, now feeling frustrated by this process of catharsis, wishing it was over, that we could move on. I took her hand and pulled it to me. “What happened with Juliana was just a reaction to losing you ... For God’s sake, she even had to pretend to be you for us to even have a relationship ..... I love you, I’ve always loved you, and I always will.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  I’m normal. Yes, I am, I’m normal. I have a modest yet comfortable flat in Crouch End, a job that, though it might not be that well paid, is respectable enough, and a partner with whom I share a healthy, loving and supportive relationship. She has never pretended to be another person, doesn’t insult my friends or create scenes in public, nor do we have stand-up fist fights in pubs. Equally importantly, she is not, and never has been, a member of the sex industry. In short, we are a well-matched, well-adjusted, and normal couple. And I can’t tell you how happy that makes me feel.

  Okay, so that’s a bit cruel, but after everything that’s happened, perhaps you can appreciate what a relief it is. There are other things in life apart from relationships, you know. Like movies, music, Sunday newspapers, football, everyday life, for chrissake. And finally, I was able to turn my mind back to some of them.

  We did briefly discuss the idea, but decided Frances wouldn’t move into the flat. Not straight away. Mind you, she did start to spend a lot of time there. Sleeping over, cooking the occasional meal; a kind of cohabitation by stealth. And it went through my mind that maybe it wasn’t so much that she wasn’t ready to move in, as she was waiting for the residue, the dust, of Juliana, to fade away.

  I couldn’t get over how different it felt with her. That much more relaxed, less demanding, less moments when you felt like a precious breakable had slipped from someone’s grasp and was on its way to the floor. We went out a lot more, mixed with friends, had a much more complete and satisfying life.

  Jill phoned, asked me why I hadn’t been to visit her and Ian for a while, and when she heard I was back with Frances, immediately invited us down the following Sunday for a barbecue.

  It was great. I love other people’s kids. Doing a guest spot, indulging them with everything you shouldn’t, being long gone before the repercussions ensue. Ian, of course, did what all men do on this most traditional of occasions: made great play of dragging the portable barbecue out of the garage, set it up on the pati
o, showed us the best way to get the perfect cooking fire going, then burnt everything and informed us that ‘charcoal deficiency’ is a serious problem with the modern diet.

  The boys, Sam and Harry, played football in the garden. Joined by me, or until an over-struck volley decapitated Ian’s prize gnome, plundered from a nearby garden on his way home from the pub one night. Whilst Jill and Frances engaged in hushed, and at times, seemingly conspiratorial conversations, which, though they flatly refused to disclose what they were about, if you ever did catch a fragment, really didn’t sound that interesting.

  In short, it was a Sunday in suburbia, and a no less glorious sky, a no less blissful atmosphere, for all that.

  After we’d eaten and consumed a couple of good bottles of red, and Sam and Harry had decided that the great outdoors was all very well, but actually, they had to get back inside to fight over the computer, the four of us languished in the garden in deckchairs: semi-supine, semi-comatosed, semi-detached.

  “You see those trees,” said Ian lazily, indicating a line of small scrubby firs at the bottom of the garden. “I planted those. With my own bare hands, I planted them. I gave them life. I am the reason they are here today.”

  “Oh God,” groaned Jill.

  “But that’s what you do while you’re here,” he explained. “It’s your responsibility. To create life. Something that will remain long after you’ve gone.”

  Jill took off the baseball cap she’d been wearing ever since snatching it off Ian’s head earlier, and threw it at him. “Who does the weeding?”

  “I don’t agree with weeding. It’s elitist.”

  “Oh, really?”

  “Every plant should be given an equal opportunity.”

  The problem with Ian is that alcohol transforms him from a taciturn ‘lifetime Scotsman’ into a garrulous one. And if you happen to be around during that process, it can sometimes seem as if the reason he’s been so thrifty with his words all that time is because he’s been saving them up. His eyes start to narrow and glaze over, as if he’s concentrating on some remote part of his mind, a place where he might excavate for your pleasure. Then off he goes, rummaging through an endless list of oddities and ‘little known facts’.