by Linus Peters
“Oh, he hasn’t invited us. I thought you realised?”
“No!”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said dismissively.
“Of course it matters! You know what Charlie’s like. Didn’t you mention it to him this morning?” I said, referring to Charlie’s usual phone call.
“No.”
Luca paused rather too long at a set of traffic lights, and I realised he was staring at this pretty, yet outrageously young, girl waiting to cross the road.
“I believe that’s green,” I told him.
“She won’t be soon,” he smiled.
The girl burst into laughter and returned Luca’s enthusiastic wave as we pulled away, and I wondered where on earth he got such conviction? If it ever occurred to him that she wasn’t thinking of him as a potential lover, a sophisticated man of the world with a cool set of wheels, but merely a sad middle-aged tosser driving an old banger?
Charlie’s got this rather nice Georgian-style house, all climbing plants and endless white gables, not too far from where Frances used to live in Chiswick, with a garden almost big enough to make you think you’re part of somewhere green and leafy. Luca swept straight into the drive, apparently oblivious of how uncomfortable I was feeling, of how unwelcome we might be.
“Luca!” I protested.
“What?” he asked innocently. “We were in the area and thought we’d call in for lunch. What’s wrong with that?”
He got out of the car, straightening himself out, putting on his Barbour, soon realising I was making no attempt to follow.
“Are you coming?” he asked.
I sighed and reluctantly tagged along behind him as he approached the solid oak front door, pressing the bell with so much confidence, you would’ve thought we were bearing gold embossed invitations.
We waited a couple of minutes but there was no reaction. Luca pressed the bell again.
“Ohhhh!” I rather wailed, feeling that once had been more than enough.
Again there was no response, though as I looked along the front of the house, I could’ve sworn I saw the curtains move in one of the bedrooms. Luca shrugged, stepped back a couple of paces, then went to press his nose up against the sitting room window.
“I think we should go,” I told him.
“Why?”
“Because I think there’s someone in there but they don’t want to see to us.”
“How do you know there’s someone in there?”
“I just think there is.”
To my annoyance, he took that as his cue to press the bell again, this time resting his finger on there a good three or four times longer.
“Luca!” I protested.
There was another very long pause, then we heard something, perhaps someone coming down the stairs? A few seconds later the bolts were being withdrawn, top and bottom, the security chain applied, and finally the handle itself slowly turned.
The door opened a few inches and no more. The small figure of Charlie’s wife, Isobel, peering out, looking so pale and dark, it was as if she was no more than skin stretched over shadow. For several seconds she didn’t say anything, just stared, and eventually Luca and I realised the onus fell upon us to speak.
“Hi .. Isobel,” Luca said. “We were just passing and we thought we’d drop in to see Charlie.”
“He’s asleep,” she said.
“Can’t you wake him?”
Immediately I started to back towards the car. “No, no, Isobel. It’s all right. We’ll go,” I said, but Luca stayed where he was.
“We would appreciate it,” he told her.
“I can’t. He doesn’t like to be disturbed,” Isobel replied, and without saying another word, she closed the door in our faces.
Luca turned and gaped at me, snorting in his indignation.
“Come on, let’s go,” I said.
With a shrug that was heavy even by Latin standards, Luca followed me to the car and soon we drove away.
“You English,” he said, as he pulled out into the main road. “Famous all over the world for your hospitality.”
“Perhaps he wasn’t feeling very well. Or maybe they’d just had an argument.”
“It was a mad house,” Luca muttered.
We drove back via Knightsbridge. Luca occasionally forgetting himself and attending to the road, instead of the many beautiful women parading in and out of shops. “Oh, my God!” he repeatedly groaned, or occasionally the more traditional, “Bella!”
“Careful!” I cried, the car in front looming dangerously close.
There was a screech as he hit the brakes, the Jag rocked back and forth on its ageing suspension, and he turned and smiled at me. “Simon. Relax, uh?”
It was as we neared the end of Brompton Road, slowing for the traffic lights at Scotch Corner, that he touched me on the arm and nodded to the far side of the street.
“Frances,” he said.
I looked over, initially unable to pick her out amongst the many passing shoppers, yet finally saw that familiar, rather erect and gliding, walk. It was Frances, heading in the direction we’d just come from. She’d told me earlier she had a day off and was going shopping, and by the look of it, the number of bags she was carrying, it had been a successful morning. However, it wasn’t that that caused me to gasp, to swivel in my seat and gape uncomprehendingly back at her.
“What the fuck?” I cried.
“Wasn’t that...?” uttered Luca, his expression no less astounded than mine.
“Stop!” I told him.
He looked at me in protest – we were entering the flow around a large roundabout. “Simon!”
“Stop!” I shouted.
Somehow he managed to nudge his way over to the side, incurring a lot of horn-blowing, grumbling at me in Italian, which I knew meant he was really angry. But I just leapt out, dodging my way across the street, slipping between two vans, emerging to almost be knocked over by a motorbike, the rider lifting his visor to swear at me.
I mean, I just couldn’t believe it. In fact, it was more of a shock to me than the first time I’d seen the two of them together. Frances and Juliana, for chrissake!
I could just make them out in the distance. I started to run, my haste such that I was out of breath before I got there, having to rather stagger the last twenty yards.
Frances was pointing out something to Juliana in a shop window, she made a comment, the two of them laughing and wandering on. What is going on here?
I don’t know whether she sensed me, or heard someone puffing and panting up behind her, but just as I was about to let myself be known, she turned round.
“Oh! .. Simon,” she said, not looking that pleased to see me.
For several seconds I couldn’t speak. Partly because I was out of breath, partly because I was in such desperate need of an explanation.
“What are you doing?” I muttered, directing Frances away from Juliana as if she was a child who I didn’t want to hear the conversation.
Frances shrugged. “She was on the tube station.”
“... And?” I asked, after a short pause.
“She looked so lost ... So sad.”
I stared at her uncomprehendingly. “You are kidding?”
“I think I’d better go,” Juliana interrupted, and the first time I turned and looked at her.
I have to say, she looked totally different from when I’d last seen her. The dark circles under her eyes were gone, the red and pinched look. In fact, she looked better than I’d seen her in a long while. All her clothes were new, and I couldn’t help but register that not one of them was black, that the hangover from the days of pretending to be Frances were now long gone. She looked every bit as elegant, every bit as beautiful, as only she could, and just in the few seconds we were standing there, two men stopped to study the display in the shop window just so they could get a better look.
“Bye, Frances. Thanks for being so nice,” she said. “Bye, Simon.” And with that she twirled around and strode away in that model-like
manner she sometimes adopts, the way she does when she’s turning it on, when she knows everyone’s looking.
“I don’t believe this,” I muttered.
“I felt sorry for her,” Frances told me, a little impatiently.
“We started talking. She was going shopping, I was going shopping.”
“So!”
“It was fine! She’s nice.”
That was more than I could take. Certainly more than I could make sense of. “Can’t you see what she’s up to?” I asked. “She’s using you to get back at me.”
Frances looked at me in a slightly knowing way. “I hate to tell you this, but you were barely mentioned.”
I gave a snort of dismissal, immediately disowning the slight blow to my pride. “Oh, come on! You’ve seen her in action. You know what she’s capable of.”
“That wasn’t exactly a normal situation.”
“Do you know why she was on the underground platform?”
“Yes.”
“She’s living nearby.”
Frances shrugged. “So? It’s the only area of London she knows.”
“I don’t believe this.”
“Look, if it makes you any happier, she’s going back to Amsterdam.”
“When?”
“Soon,” she replied.
“Not soon enough,” I grumbled.
“Simon!”
“What?”
“You of all people.”
I knew exactly what she was saying. What I’d been saying to myself for a while now. That someone like me, who’d suffered the way I had over her, should be that bit more understanding of someone else in the same position.
“That was different.”
“How?”
“Oh, come on!” I cried in frustration, feeling there should be no need to explain. “Look, I’m warning you, keep away from her.”
I meant I was warning her about what Juliana might do, not that I was issuing an ultimatum, but she misunderstood. Without another word, Frances also turned on heel and walked away. In the opposite direction to Juliana, thank God, but I was still too annoyed to follow.
I stayed there for a moment, barely able to believe what I’d just witnessed, then started to slowly make my way back to where I’d left Luca. However, I wasn’t surprised to find that he’d gone.
I thought about the nearby tube station but instead just wandered on, soon finding myself in the wide open expanse of Hyde Park. I needed a little peace, an opportunity to untangle some of the thoughts I had bunched up in my head.
I just couldn’t understand why Frances would do such a thing. It seemed so illogical. Reckless. Almost as if she wanted to give Juliana an opportunity to cause trouble. And as for Juliana, well, first off, I’d been hoping that the fact that I hadn’t heard anything meant she was back in Amsterdam. And secondly, I was a little disturbed by her transformation. I mean, the last time I’d seen her she’d been so down. So beaten. Yet suddenly she was back to her formidable best, and I, for one, didn’t feel entirely comfortable about it.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
When I got back to work, I was disappointed to find Luca had gone for the day and I couldn’t apologise for my behaviour, nor discuss what had happened. Instead I grabbed a coffee and slunk away into my office, planning to finish an article I’d been working on for far too long but found I just couldn’t concentrate. All I could think about was seeing those two together, and what I was going to say to Frances when I got home. I mean, I just didn’t get it. Why on earth would she invite Juliana to go shopping?
I deliberately arrived back at the flat a little later than usual, by then, rather more fearful of, than spoiling for, a fight, however, Frances wasn’t there.
I fixed myself a sandwich, sat down in front of the television, anticipating she’d only be a short while, but it was almost nine before I finally heard her key in the lock. Neither of us greeted the other.
“I haven’t eaten. I was waiting for you,” I eventually said.
“I’m not hungry,” she replied.
I paused, still not exactly sure who should be making the peace moves here, but deciding that, if I was in doubt, there was every chance it was me. “I’m sorry about earlier. It was such a shock.” I waited, but she never commented. “I just can’t see why you’d go shopping with her.”
“Why not?” she asked coolly, showing more interest in the letters she’d had in the post than me.
I turned and gave this kind of helpless laugh. Surely she wasn’t going to continue with this? “You are joking?”
“She realises how stupid she was. Playing your little game.”
“Our little game!”
“Whatever,” she said, barely conceding the point. “Anyway, she seems to be over it now.”
“I don’t believe it.”
Frances looked at me slightly accusingly. “Why not?”
I paused, suddenly feeling that bit unsure. “What’s she been saying?”
“I told you – nothing. I don’t suppose you were mentioned more than a couple of times ... Sorry,” she added, in a mock apology, ripping open some decidedly unpromising looking correspondence.
I poured myself some more wine from the half consumed bottle I’d dug out of the fridge, proffered some to her, but she ignored me. What’s going on here? It would be a lie to say that Frances and I never argued, of course we did, but at least I usually recognised what it was about.
“I don’t like this,” I told her. “This is exactly what I mean. She’d be delighted to think she caused this.”
“She can only cause trouble if she’s important in any way,” Frances told me.
And finally I got some idea what this was about. The same thing she’d mentioned that afternoon down in Brighton.
“Is that why you spent the morning with her?”
“I told you, I felt sorry for her.”
“To check her out?” I persisted.
She gave the most subtle of shrugs.
“Frances!” I groaned, making a move towards her, but she turned away. “She’s nothing compared to you. Okay, yes, she’s beautiful, of course she is, but so are you.”
“Yes, I know. On the inside.”
“Stop it!” I cried frustratedly. “You’re so much than she could never be.”
“Yeah, yeah,” she muttered.
I almost laughed. It was that ridiculous. “The irony is, it’s one of the reasons why I love you so much that’s caused this problem.”
She didn’t say anything, but I could tell she was waiting for an explanation.
“If the positions had been reversed – if it had been you all sad and lonely on the tube station - do you think she would’ve taken you under her wing? ... No way. You’re a special person. A huge and generous spirit.”
I was trying, and I meant every word of it, and more, but I knew it was hopeless. That for whatever reason, in that moment, there was no chance of me giving her what she needed.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced.
“Frances!”
“What?”
“Please!”
“What?”
“You’re not going to see her again, are you?”
She shrugged, as if she wasn’t in the mood to concede anything. “I told you, she’s going back to Amsterdam”
“Good!” I said. “I don’t want her anywhere near us.”
For a while after that things were decidedly fragile, both Frances and I on edge when going to the local shops, or the tube station, or even just driving in the general area. However, as one unremarkable week followed after another, and with no further sightings of Juliana, we slowly began to accept that she must’ve returned to Amsterdam, that finally we’d been left in peace. Our relief was such that within no time we were happier than we’d ever been. Everything seemed so much more pure and honest. This sense that if you took a vacuum cleaner to our relationship, left it to suck for several days, it still wouldn’t come up with anything unpleasant.
I finally - a fanfare, if you please - managed to write an article on Charlie’s lap-top. It wasn’t exactly an act of complete competence - somehow I managed to open it in three different files - but at least I did it.
I came rushing out of the bedroom - I always work in there now that Frances has set up in the sitting room - so pleased with myself.
“I’ve finished!”
“Brilliant,” she said, without so much as looking away from her screen. “Now all you’ve got to do is e-mail it to the office.”
“What?” I asked, after a pause, as if someone had just told me that, actually, the Holy Grail is part of a set.
“E-mail it. It’s ridiculous to keep going into the office all the time.”
I stared at her for so long that eventually she felt my helplessness and turned to face me.
“Simon!” she said, jumping up and leading me back into the bedroom. “You can plug into the extension and go online.”
“Really?”
She found the lap-top’s bag, pulled out some wires, and within a matter of seconds, had plugged me in.
“What’s the address?”
I gave her my business card, and seconds later, my article, that I’d just written here, was apparently sitting in a computer at the office.
“I can’t do that,” I told her.
“A child of three can do it.”
“There you are then. Past it.”
She spent the next half-an-hour or so explaining it to me. I mean, I’d sent e-mails before, but always with help. This was the first time someone had tried to show me how to mail solo, and quite frankly, if it had been anyone but Frances, the fact that I didn’t feel so foolish in front of her, that I knew that once she’d been as much a technophobe as me, I would probably have adopted my famous blithely dense and self-deprecating mode. As it was, I actually found myself giving the task my full attention.
Finally, having decided she’d done all she could, she left me to play on my own for a while. I sent three emails in the next ten minutes - all to myself.
“Frances!” I cried. “H-e-l-p!”
“What?” she sighed, appearing in the doorway again.
In the end, believe it or not, I did finally get it. I sent an e-mail to Luca in the office, an e-mail to myself in the office, and for good measure, an e-mail to my aged parents in Bath, who, much to my embarrassment, have been silver surfing for years.