by Isabel Wolff
‘Oh fuck! My arm,’ he breathed. ‘Ooohhh!’ He winced, red-faced with discomfort as he redistributed his weight. ‘Blo-ody hell!’ he reiterated, closing his eyes and drawing his breath through his clenched teeth.
‘Well, Ed, maybe we shouldn’t, you know, do it, until you’re better.’
‘No, honestly. I’ll be fine. Right, where were we? Let’s try again.’ We shifted again, our legs tangled, and he gingerly turned onto his back, and tried to pull me on top, but suddenly his face creased again.
‘Ed, what’s the matter?’ I put my hand on his chest.
‘It’s my ribs. Ow, don’t touch them—it’s agony—I can’t breathe!’
‘Look, let’s not push it,’ I said. ‘You’ve got three broken bones. Why don’t we just cuddle instead.’
He nodded, defeated, and pulled me to him. ‘Okay, but it’s frustrating, isn’t it?’
‘Hmm.’ Although the truth was I felt strangely relieved. We lay there like that for half an hour, my hand on his chest, half-waking, half-sleeping; and for some strange reason I found myself wondering what it would be like to lie in bed with Theo like this, face to face, our limbs pleached and plaited, like rope. I remembered the pattern of pale freckles, like faint galaxies, which spangled Theo’s back. I remembered his slim, muscled torso, and his broad shoulders, and his sinewy hands and feet; I remembered his strong, muscular calves and I—What was I thinking? This was mad. This is mad, Rose, I told myself angrily. This is just crazy. Get real. You’re only fantasizing about Theo because he’s leaving, but the fact is your life’s changing too. You want to have a baby; Ed’s happy for you to have one so you’re going to come back to him and that’s that!
And now I summoned up all kinds of clichés with which to justify my return to Ed. I felt like Serena as I mentally groped for some comforting maxim. ‘A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush’. ‘You don’t look a gift horse in the mouth’. ‘You have to take the rough with the smooth’. ‘Carpe Diem’. Suddenly the phone on Ed’s bedside rang.
‘Yes? Oh hi, Ruth.’ It was his sister. ‘Yes, getting better, slowly, thanks.’ I noticed the upward inflection of her voice; she was asking him something. ‘Hmm, she did,’ he said. ‘Look it’s not very convenient right now, Ruth. Yes I know, I know. I know all that,’ he added, irritably. In the background I could hear Ruth’s voice rising. ‘But I just can’t do it. No. Because I can’t. Look, I’ve just come out of hospital and I’m not going—yes, yes, yes—I know. Well he should have thought of that six years ago, shouldn’t he? Look, I can’t talk any more.’ He put the phone down, then stared at the ceiling, his jaw flexing. I saw a small blue vein pulsing by his eye.
‘Do you want to tell me about that?’ I asked him quietly, as I studied his profile.
‘No,’ he replied. ‘I don’t.’
‘Is it Jon again?’ I asked. He nodded. ‘What’s the problem?’
‘The whole family are…getting at me. Putting me under terrible pressure. As though I haven’t done enough for him in the past.’
‘So he wants more money?’
‘What? Hmm. Anyway, let’s change the subject,’ he said, wrapping his left arm round me. ‘What shall we talk about?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘I do,’ he said turning to me and smiling. ‘Let’s discuss babies’ names.’
‘What a week,’ wrote Trevor in his column on Monday:
The brouhaha over Dogs of Distinction has finally died down but I’ve been dog-tired because a) we’ve had the hall carpet replaced with some rather tasty parquet so I had a lot of clearing up to do after that—and b) our Bev’s not been well. She’s had the flu. Yeah—in May. I ask you! But she was completely poleaxed, poor kid. So yours truly has been in assistance overdrive what with all the to-ing and fro-ing to the chemists, collecting prescriptions—and no time to see my mates. Then there’s been all the running up and down stairs with paracetamol, boxes of tissues, Lemsips and the rest. Plus bringing her the letters—being careful not to slobber on them—and the phone—and the paper which she was too weak to read. Luckily her mum came for a bit which gave me a chance to catch up on the chores, do the laundry, a bit of gardening—that kind of thing. But Bev’s desperate to get better in time for our friend Theo’s book launch later this week. He’s written this brilliant astronomy guide called Heavenly Bodies, fully illustrated, and priced at a very reasonable ten quid. And then—thank Dog!—Bev’s Beloved rang to say he’s back in town in for a month so that’s cheered the poor girl up. As I say, she’s been a bit up and down with that one, what with not quite knowing how keen he was, and then him being away so much. But he’s been round to ours for dinner a couple of times, and I must say he seems to be a nice enough bloke: house-trained and everything, bright eyes, glossy coat, and she’s dead keen, so I’ve got my paws crossed…
‘It was very nice of you to plug Theo’s book, Trevor,’ I said to him as Beverley and I made our way to Piccadilly for the book launch three days later. We’d been frantic at work—it was Bev’s first day back—so there’d been no time to chat. But now, as we sped up St James’s in the back of the cab, we relaxed.
‘Well Trevor adores Theo,’ Beverley remarked. ‘He’d do anything to help him. Ooh, dog hairs, Rose. On your sleeve, sorry about that.’
‘Really? I couldn’t care less.’ As I looked at Trev I suddenly understood why, despite my former aversion to dogs, I liked this one so much. It was because I recognised that we had a great deal in common, Trevor and I.
‘It’s awful to think of Trevor being dumped on the motorway, like that,’ I said. ‘Poor little thing.’
‘I know,’ Beverley sighed. ‘He was only a baby. He was very lucky to survive.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I think it’s had a big psychological effect on him,’ she went on. ‘I’m sure that that’s why he chose a caring profession. He needs to feel needed.’
‘Really?’
‘Don’t you think so?’
‘I…don’t know. All I know is that Ed could do with a dog like you to help him, Trevor,’ I remarked as I stroked his ears.
‘How is Ed?’ Beverley asked. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you, but we’ve had no time to chat today. Is his arm healing?’
‘Yes it is, thanks. He’s going back to work on Monday—he’ll have been off for two weeks. It hasn’t been easy,’ I sighed.
‘Theo said you’ve been spending a lot of time over there.’ I shrugged, then nodded. ‘So is it going well then?’
‘No, not really. In fact he’s moving out. I wish he wasn’t,’ I added dismally. Beverley gave me one of her old fashioned looks.
‘I meant Ed, Rose, not Theo. I was talking about Ed.’
‘Oh. Oh…of course.’
‘Is it going well?’ she repeated as I looked out of the window.
‘I suppose so, yes. In some ways.’
‘I do hope I won’t be losing you as a neighbour,’ she said quietly.
‘I don’t know, Bev. Maybe…’
‘Are you going to move back in with him then?’
‘Well, no. Or at least, not yet, I…’ Suddenly, as we turned right into Piccadilly I saw a woman pushing a buggy. She looked radiantly, unassailably happy. ‘But then on the other hand,’ I said, ‘yes. Yes it’s quite possible that I’ll go back to Ed. I’m just trying to…work it all out. To be honest, I’m rather confused, Bev,’ I went on after a few moments. ‘You know I asked you about Mary-Claire Grey, and why she left Ed?’ She nodded. ‘Well, I’ve decided I don’t want to know.’
‘That’s okay,’ she replied. ‘I guessed you didn’t, as you haven’t mentioned it again.’
‘I just feel it’s all in the past.’
She looked at me and nodded. ‘Sure.’
‘And in any case she would probably have been rude about him, so I wouldn’t really want to hear.’
‘Of course. In any case,’ said Bev as she fiddled with Trevor’s lead, ‘I’ve…forgotten the reason, whatever it was. S
o everything’s changing then?’ she added brightly. This wasn’t so much a question as an observation. Into my mind flashed Theo’s room, which would soon be empty.
‘Yes. Everything’s changing,’ I said.
The cab pulled up in the entrance of the Royal Academy, the driver dropped the ramp, and I pushed Beverley through the cobbled courtyard of Burlington House. In front of us was the RA, and to our left we saw ‘R.Astronomical Soc.’ emblazoned in chiselled gold lettering over a door.
‘This is very venerable,’ Beverley observed. I pushed her wheelchair up the ramp, and we went in through the glass doors into a Wedgwood blue pilastered hallway, with a black and white marble tiled floor. We followed the crowd through into the Fellows’ Room on our right. It was oak-panelled with gleaming oil paintings of eminent astronomers and was already quite full. On the right was a glass cabinet with some antique telescopes and, on the left, a table with copies of the book. It was the first time I’d seen it as it had been published so fast. Beverley and I both bought one then we made our way through the mostly male throng.
‘—my new Takahashi’s got very nice adaptive optics.’
‘—I prefer a Newtonian reflector myself.’
‘—fascinating lecture on helio-seismology.’
‘—there was a brilliant fireball in Ursa Major last week.’
‘—did you see the occultation of Saturn?’
‘—too cloudy, but there’s going to be a perihelic opposition of Mars.’
‘Star bores!’ whispered Beverley with a laugh. Trevor trotted ahead, parting the crowd for us as if he were a border collie carving up sheep.
‘Hey!’ Theo exclaimed, as he caught sight of us. ‘My two favourite women!’
‘Congratulations!’ we said.
He saw that we were holding copies of his book. ‘I hope you didn’t pay for those.’
‘Of course we did,’ said Bev. ‘It looks lovely,’ she added.
‘Yes it does. But it was touch and go that we’d have them in time for the party as they only came back from the printers this afternoon.’
‘Well we’d like you to graffiti them. But please write clearly Theo as your handwriting’s so atrocious,’ Bev giggled, ‘and could you sign it to me and Trev?’
‘What wonderful pictures,’ I murmured as I flicked through it. There were photographs from Hubble of glittering star clusters and of the Stingray Nebula like a vast pink and green fish. There was one of a sun in its death throes throwing out great shells of red and mauve gas. There was another of a cartwheel shaped galaxy—the result of two galaxies crashing—spinning through the blackness of space. There was a photo of Neptune, as blue as the sea, with a swirl of streaky white cloud. And here was the Shoemaker-Levy comet smashing into Jupiter, and the sun setting on Mars. The images were so utterly beautiful, they made my soul ache. I sighed, then turned to the opening pages ready for Theo to sign. He’d dedicated the book to the memory of his maternal grandfather, Hugh Adams, ‘who first encouraged me to look up’. On the opposite page was the list of acknowledgements; to my amazement, I read my own name.
‘Thanks, Theo,’ I heard Beverley say as she read his inscription. ‘That’s really nice.’
‘Theo,’ I said, ‘you didn’t have to acknowledge me—I didn’t do anything.’
‘You did. You let me live in your house, and that made me feel a lot happier and so I was able to work.’ I smiled. Theo’s hand hovered over the page for a moment, and then he began to write. As he did so I looked at him, and thought of how he would soon be leaving me, going beyond my sphere: and now the astro-babble seemed to fade to silence as I remembered the last six months.
—You’d look great as the Botticelli Venus…
—You could easily attract a man of my age…
—Are you up for it…?
—A galaxy’s a city of stars…
—The thought that your mother might be out there, somewhere…
—There’s life beyond every relationship, Rose…
—I could teach you, if you like…
—Now add the lemon grass and the ginger…
—Look for her—it’s not too late.
‘There you are,’ he said as he handed me the book. I read his inscription. To the celestial Rose, who drew me into her lovely orbit. With love and gratitude, Theo.
‘Oh that’s so…nice,’ I said impotently. Tears pricked the backs of my eyes. ‘It’s just lovely, Theo. I don’t know what to say.’ We stood there, smiling at each other awkwardly, drawn together by gravity, or perhaps simply pushed together by the press of the crowd.
‘Tell me again when you’re going?’ I said.
‘Well I exchanged today and the flat’s vacant for possession so I’ll be completing in a day or two.’
‘I didn’t think it would happen so quickly,’ I said. ‘It’s really taken me aback.’
‘Me too. I thought it would take me months but it’s only been a fortnight. I’ll miss you, Rose,’ he added suddenly. My heart did a swallow dive.
‘I’ll miss you too,’ I whispered.
‘Really?’ I nodded. ‘So we’ll both miss each other then.’
‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’ He smiled his funny, lopsided smile. ‘It does.’
‘It’s been lovely having you staying with me.’
‘Really?’
I nodded. ‘You’ve made, well, a big difference to my life.’
‘I have?’
I nodded again because I found I couldn’t speak. Theo was leaving me.
‘Rose,’ he said.
‘Yes?’ My eyes were stinging and my throat ached.
‘Rose, I—’
‘Theo!’ An attractive blonde had come up to him and laid her hand on his arm. She was from the publishers; she looked crisp, brisk and official.
‘Oh hello, Camilla,’ he said.
‘Theo, can I just drag you over to meet this guy from Channel 4, the one I told you about? He’s heard you lecture and thinks you’re going to be the new Patrick Moore. Then Felicity from the Mail wants to do an interview with you. She says you’re going to be to star-watching what Jamie Oliver is to cooking—you know, The Naked Astronomer!’ Theo laughed. ‘And then I want you to meet Clare from the Discovery Channel, she’s got a few ideas she’d like to discuss.’
‘Sorry, Rose,’ said Theo. He shrugged. ‘I’ve just got to talk to some people.’
‘Of course,’ I smiled. ‘You go.’ He disappeared into the crowd, which seemed to suck him in like a black hole, and I couldn’t see him any more. And now, all around me, people were talking about him.
‘—He’s really going places, that boy.’
‘—He’ll get a TV series, I’m sure of it.’
‘—Well he’s very telegenic.’
‘—Oh yes.’
‘—And that attractive Yorkshire accent.’
‘—He’s a populist, but his science is sound.’
Theo’s life is going to change hugely, I realised. This book is a watershed and nothing will be the same after this. It’ll take him into a whole new sphere, and he’ll be meeting all kinds of new people. Everything will change. He’ll leave Hope Street and move into his flat and maybe we’ll stay in touch for a while. And then the phone calls will gradually stop. And I’ll open the Post one day at the gossip column and see that he’s got engaged. And I’ll have a huge pang of regret and I’ll be out of sorts for a few days and my friends will wonder what’s up. But then I’ll decide to be sensible, and to think of him simply as that nice person who lived with me for a while, and who taught me to look up… Theo was at a major crossroads. His life would be very different after this. So would mine I saw. For I was at a crossroads too. But there was no question which was the best direction for me to go in—Wright.
Chapter 21
I hardly saw Theo for the next three days. He was busy doing interviews about the book, and to-ing and fro-ing to his solicitor’s and the estate agent’s, and I was still l
ooking after Ed. But on Monday, Ed went back to work. I drove him in as he can’t risk being jostled or barged on the tube. As he had to be there by nine, I got in to work earlier than usual. To save Beverley, I opened the mail.
‘What have we got today?’ I wondered out loud as I ripped into the first envelope.
Dear Rose, I read, I suffer from premature matriculation and my girlfriend is threatening to leave me. Please can you help? I was fairly sure he didn’t mean he’d passed all his ‘A’ levels at twelve. I sighed, fired off a short letter, enclosing the relevant leaflet, logged it, then opened the next. Dear Rose, I don’t know what to do—I feel so bad because for the past two years I have been having an affair with a married man, but it wasn’t international. Oh God. Dear Rose, I recently got married to a man with a rather unfortunate surname. When I announce myself people snigger and make all sorts of unfunny remarks. I’d like to revert to my maiden name but I know that this will offend my husband and his family. What should I do? Mrs T.Bottie. Why didn’t she think of that before? To avoid hurting her husband’s feelings I advised her to hyphenate both names, continental style—as long as her maiden name wasn’t ‘Bigg’.
Then there was a letter asking about wedding etiquette for a couple who’d both been married before. With me exchanging vows for the third time and my fiancée for the fourth, we’re very worried about the ceremony. Not least because it turns out that my fiancée’s ex-husband but once dated my father’s new girlfriend, and it didn’t end very well. Plus my ex-stepdaughter is threatening to boycott the wedding if her father’s new boyfriend is there, but I can’t not invite him as his ex-wife is my accountant and has stuff on me about my VAT. I’m having sleepless nights, Rose and can imagine scuffles on our big day. What should I do? Don’t bother getting married, I was tempted to write back. With a track record like yours what’s the point? Instead I suggested that they should invite no-one to the service but throw a party, at a later date, in a very large venue, so that the warring factions could be kept apart.