by Gould, R J
“I’m not going to listen to this.” Jane headed into the hall and opened the front door. She turned, exuding hate in her eyes, in her voice and via the index finger pointing at him. “How dare you tell me what I should be doing! You can’t imagine what I’m going through, you inconsiderate bastard.”
David had known her for over twenty years. It struck him now for the first time that she had never been able to admit she was the one in the wrong. And it was happening again. According to Jane he was the one who was selfish, inconsiderate and spiteful, when it was she who was walking out on him.
“And now you’re smiling!” she shrieked.
“You have their mobile numbers, I suggest you phone them. Oh and Jane…”
“What?”
“I hope things don’t work out for you.”
He sensed surprise and perhaps even a little fear in her eyes before she turned and slammed the door.
The Reunion – R J Gould
Chapter 4
“You said that. Good for you,” Bridget declared. “Well, I did feel rather guilty after she’d gone, but at the time it was like a release of tension.”
“I can understand that.”
The woman dressed in adult school wear was making another announcement. She had climbed onto one of the table tops and was swaying perilously, stiletto heels and alcohol not helping her to maintain balance. “It’s time for the music! A back to the ‘80s disco in the bar. Non-stop hits so let’s rock, rock, rock.” She started to dance on the table and sent the vase with its solitary rose crashing to the floor. “Roger, where’s Roger? Help me down will you, it’s not safe up here.”
Bridget stood. “I suppose we’d better mingle a bit. Shall we dance?” She took hold of David’s hand and pulled him towards the music. Ghostbusters was blaring out and those already dancing were lifting their arms into the air and chanting ‘Ghostbusters’ at approximately appropriate times.
“Not this one Bridget, I can’t stand it,” David pleaded.
“OK, let’s see what’s next.”
“This is better,” David said as Madonna’s Like a Virgin began. They moved to the centre of the room and leapt about in similar fashion to the other partygoers. The dance floor got crowded and every so often there was a ‘Sorry. Oh hello, David’ as they bumped into another couple. Eurythmics and Thompson Twins hits followed Madonna.
“Now let’s slow it down for all you lovers out there,” the DJ announced. “It’s from 1984, it’s Cars performing Drive.” There were sighs and screams of ‘I love this!’ as the first sad chords were struck. Bridget put her arms round David’s neck and he responded by placing his hands on her waist, lightheaded with the warmth of her body against his. He wanted the closeness to linger but she pulled away at the end of the song.
“Let’s get a drink,” she suggested.
Together they walked to the bar. David ordered another Bud and a glass of house white which he handed to Bridget as Bill Thatcher approached.
“Well, if it isn’t me old mate David again. And who’s this? Rather a neat looking bird for someone like you to be hanging around with.”
“I’d rather not be defined as a bird, most people stopped using that word about twenty years ago. My name’s Bridget and will you get out of the way so we can get past.”
“You what?”
“Just piss off out the way will you, or else I might accidentally spill my wine all over your ugly face.”
“You what?” he repeated, standing his ground.
“Or does your repertoire extend to hitting females?”
Bill had a puzzled look, unsure how to react.
“You look confused, Bill. Oh, it must be because repertoire is rather a difficult word for you to understand. It comes from the Latin, repertorium, but of course you were far too thick to be in the Latin class at school. Well let me put it another way. Either hit me now or fuck off out of it.”
With that she turned and walked past Bill with David following her.
“Bloody hell, Bridget. There I was thinking you were an exceptionally delicate and polite woman, but then you manage to intimidate the school bully. Rather high risk, but well done.”
“I’ve had years of practice.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s a long story.”
“As you said a while back, it’s a long evening.”
“Not now, maybe another time. But I’d love to hear more about what happened to you. Let’s go somewhere quieter.” Led by Bridget they left the bar and reached the reception area. “We can sit down over there,” she suggested, pointing towards two vast red leather armchairs. They sank into them and placed their drinks on a smoked glass coffee table littered with back copies of Country Life.
Bridget continued. “You still haven’t answered my original question. How come you ended up here tonight?”
David glanced back towards the room they had come from, expecting Bill, Ben and a lynching party of their associates to arrive at any moment. But the other guests remained at the bar or on the dance floor. A Culture Club song was playing, he couldn’t remember the title. “Good idea sitting here,” he joked, looking across to the muscular night porter with shaved head and beefy arms covered in tattoos. “He’ll protect us when Bill arrives.”
Bridget smiled, one of those smiles that encourage you to smile back. “You were up to when you told Jane you hoped she ended up unhappy, or something like that.”
David paused. He took a gulp of beer to give himself time to consider what next to tell Bridget. She seemed genuinely interested, even concerned with his plight. But he had only just met her, well since childhood anyway. How much should he be relating about personal matters that were still painful to think about?
“It was not a happy time, for me or the children. Sam was convinced everything would end up fine and Rachel was threatening to murder her mother. It was a mess and to a large extent still is. If you don’t mind I’ll leave it at that for now. Suffice to say it was clear that Jane wasn’t going to change her mind. She’d already packed suitcases to take to Jim’s and she’d even lifted some of what she wanted from the house, including a painting we’d bought soon after we married which I’m very fond of. I was annoyed that she thought she could take whatever she felt like without even asking.”
Bill, Ben and five other men came into the reception area. David tensed up but the group walked past without eye contact, cigarettes at the ready to be lit as soon as they stepped outside.
“And Jane still hadn’t sat down with the kids to explain what was going on. She should have tried harder. Even though Rachel rejected her approaches, she should have persevered.”
Bridget nodded. Her sympathetic face was as beautiful as her smiling one. David had succumbed to teenagesque passion together with the angst that invariably goes with it. He was an adolescent again, the twenty-five years since being at school washed away by this chance meeting.
“I’ll tell you what’s odd though,” he continued. “I was unhappy, I still am. But just a few weeks on I’m not nearly as unhappy as I thought I would or even should be. It’s made me realise the relationship between Jane and me had become distant; her walking out brought the reality home. My anger’s pretty well gone because I recognise that at least in part I’m responsible for what happened.”
Bridget interrupted. “Wait a minute. It’s good of you to think that, but you weren’t the one who ran off with someone else without any discussion.”
“No, true enough. Thanks for saying so, Bridget. And I must admit the shock was huge. Luckily friends and work colleagues rallied round. I was invited to the cinema, bowling, clubbing, dinner parties. Some of them suggested strategies for getting a new partner, but that was the last thing on my mind. In fact I haven’t taken up any offers because I feel the pressure of being responsible for looking after the kids.”
“So how come you came to this reunion?” Bridget persevered.
David wanted to impress her with light and witty p
atter. Instead it was like being in a counselling session. “Another drink first?” he asked.
“No, I’m fine thanks. Carry on.”
With reluctance he did so. “Well one evening I was watching some TV drama and there was a young girl who looked the spitting image of Marianne Dunnell. Do you remember her?”
“I certainly do.”
“We used to call her Marianne Faithfull. She looked just like the singer – an absolute stunner all the boys thought.”
“Us girls called her Marianne Unfaithful. She hopped from boyfriend to boyfriend every day and her girlfriends didn’t last much longer.”
“Oh I didn’t know that. Anyway, I had a sudden impulse to contact her even though she’d had little to do with me at school. My Rachel uses Facebook, for far too long I tell her, but I wondered whether it could help me get in touch with Marianne. The next evening Rachel showed me how it all worked. I set up a profile and password and went on the search for friends. When I typed in the name up came one Marianne Dunnell, she listed Dunnell as her maiden name as well as Peters which is her married one. She was located in Oxford, Boars Hill to be exact. I was pretty sure it had to be her, bearing in mind the unusual surname and where she lives. I sent a message asking her to be my friend and the next day I had a reply. Do you use Facebook?”
“No, my kids do but I can’t be bothered with it. My two say they’ve got about three thousand friends. Or is it three million? But they only recognise about five of them.”
Bill, Ben and their entourage came back into reception, laughing loudly. ‘You fuckin’ didn’t?’ one of them enquired. ‘I fuckin’ did’ another responded. ‘Fuckin’ hell’ a third piped in, their voices so alike it was hard to tell who was doing the talking. This time they did notice Bridget and David. Bill, who was at the front of the group, stopped and looked down at Bridget. The other men formed a row behind him, facing her. ‘Bitch,’ he declared and the others thought this was highly amusing. ‘Yeah, bitch’ another of the faceless nobodies muttered as he followed Bill back into the bar.
“They are…” David began.
“Never mind them, they aren’t worth thinking about. What happened with Marianne?”
“Initially very little. She wrote a brief hello, not much more than a ‘yes I do remember you’. I wasn’t going to let her get away with that so I wrote back, rather a long message that I soon discovered was being read by all her friends and their friends. Apparently she was teased about this long lost admirer of hers. It was embarrassing as I’d written how much everyone at school had fancied her and asked if she wanted to meet up for old times’ sake.”
“How did she reply?”
“She started off with advice about how to write something on Facebook that only the person it’s sent to can see. Then she gave an update. To cut a long story short, she got married to a man training to be a cleric soon after leaving school. Now she has five teenage children, two dogs and a hamster, and works as a librarian in the law department at the university.”
“Marianne a librarian! Hard to believe. In fact being married to a vicar and with loads of kids presumably from the same father is also a revelation.”
“Well in our short flurry of messaging she mentioned the reunion and gave me the email address of the organiser, that woman who likes standing on tables. Marianne intended to come along herself but emailed me with only a couple of days to go. Her husband had organised a surprise weekend away to celebrate their wedding anniversary and she had to cancel. I’d signed up for the reunion and booked the hotel by then so I thought why not.”
Bridget glanced at her watch then across to the night porter who was leaning over the reception counter reading a newspaper. He yawned, she yawned too. The 1980s hits were still blasting out. “Well, I’m glad you made it, David. But I’m afraid I’m done for the night, if you don’t mind.”
“No, I’ve had enough, too. Well I don’t mean enough of you, just that if you’re heading off then I don’t feel like mixing with anyone else.”
They stood and took the wide staircase with its plush red carpet and ivory and gold striped wallpaper up to the fire door on the first floor landing.
“I’m this way,” Bridget announced.
“Me too.”
They walked along the corridor glancing at the prints of hunting scenes until Bridget stopped at Room 134. “This is mine.”
“I’m next door. 136.”
“Coincidence. Hey, it’s been nice chatting David, I’ve enjoyed this evening loads. Maybe see you at breakfast.”
David didn’t reply. He was too busy thinking of something to say to prolong their time together, the closeness of their bedrooms a nagging contributory factor. Possibilities crossed his mind. Fancy a coffee before bed? Would you like to see if the décor in my bedroom is the same as yours? Shall we share a bed tonight?
She took hold of his shoulder and planted a kiss on his cheek. “Goodnight,” she said key in hand, and he was still thinking of the elusive one-liner after she had closed her door and left him standing alone in the corridor.
The Reunion – R J Gould
Chapter 5
The days after that dreadful Saturday when Jane walked out, the days he hadn’t wanted to tell Bridget about, had been hell. The Sunday morning meeting with Jane had hardly been a good start. He fluctuated between guilt and a questioning of sanity that he should even be considering an apology. Three times he lifted the phone then replaced it before guilt won at 12.07 pm and he called her. Jim answered her mobile. “What do you want, David?” he snapped.
“To speak with Jane if you don’t mind.”
“I’m not letting you.”
“I want to speak to my wife.”
“Not after what you said. She wants nothing to do with you.” Before David could respond, Jim launched into a severe tirade covering decency, loyalty, compassion, morality and quite possibly much more, but David hung up before the end of the monologue.
He walked round to the newsagent to buy the Sunday Times. Everything on the short journey was the same as ever – Isobel pushing the pram in a vain attempt to stop her baby crying, Lawrence washing his BMW, Mrs Grant nurturing her flowers and plants with care beyond the call of duty. It was only his life that was different.
“Hello Mr Willoughby, and how are you today?” asked Stanley Entwhistle, the newsagent and postmaster who had been around since David had first moved to the area. He had a wild mop of white hair with matching strands leaping up from his eyebrows and out his ears. Stanley had seen his children progress from infancy to adolescence and now he would be seeing his marriage go from ceremony to cessation.
“Fine thanks.”
David dropped the newspaper onto the counter and took out his wallet.
“What about your Mail on Sunday?”
“Not today, thanks.”
Back at home David half-heartedly read the newspaper, vaguely acknowledging that economic freefall, terrorist threats and post-accident motorway mayhem perhaps were more significant than his own crisis. He skipped lunch.
He was in the hall en route from kitchen to downstairs toilet when the first of his children returned. Rachel opened the front door, cigarette in hand.
“Put that thing out,” David ordered.
“OK,” she said, throwing the stub behind her onto the small tidy front lawn, “but I smoke. I won’t inside the house, but that’s all I’m agreeing to.”
Still somewhat hung-over, David didn’t have the energy to argue.
“And have I missed my fucking bitch of a mother?” Rachel continued.
The previous day’s anger might be acceptable, but David was not prepared to tolerate habitual use of that word from his sixteen year old daughter. “There is no need to swear, thank you very much.”
“Fucking bitch, fucking bitch, fucking bitch,” Rachel chanted as she brushed past him and headed up to her room. A minute later Britney Spears was belting out of her music system.
David stood in the hall trying to re
member why he’d left the kitchen in the first place.
The phone rang, it was Sam. “Dad, could you pick me up? Now please. Adrian and I have had a bit of a bust up. He’s blaming me for running his car into a skirting board, but he didn’t tell me it had a turbo accelerator. Anyway it’s only the bumper that’s busted and his dad says a bit of glue will sort it.”
David agreed to set off immediately. He called up to Rachel to let her know he was popping out. He left without keys; rang the doorbell to get back in to collect them; rang it again when a Britney track ended and Rachel had a chance of hearing; picked them up; went out and unlocked the car; recalled that the original reason for leaving the kitchen was to go to the toilet; went back inside to do so; and finally departed. “I can’t think clearly anymore,” he uttered as he started the engine.
He drove through the comfortable streets of suburban Mill Hill with a surge of feeling sorry for himself, jealous that for those in the immaculately ordered houses he was passing, life would no doubt be as secure as the day before. Well maybe not, he reconsidered, his mind now racing with what ifs. Perhaps the loss of a job or a death in the family. Or conceivably like him, a wife leaving, leaving to live with a so-called best friend. A wave of self-disgust added to his concoction of emotions when for a split second he hoped others were facing similar grief.
He turned into the gravelled drive of Adrian’s impressive Totteridge house, an ornate structure with classical pillars at the front door. Armless marble Romanesque statues stood on each side, a naked man and woman facing each other. The door bell chimed La Marseillaise – Adrian’s mother was French. David knew the father dealt in property sales in Europe and rumour had it he was struggling to cope with the severe economic recession on top of changed Spanish laws about foreign ownership. Clearly he wasn’t struggling sufficiently to have to vacate this palace or trade in the Porsche and Daimler on the drive.
Mrs Grainger came to the door. “I am so sorry to hear your news.”