The First Time I Saw Your Face

by Hazel Osmond

  Over supper later, he was certain it was, although he had to admit she knew how to cook. He’d had double helpings of her shepherd’s pie (which under the circumstances he thought was an apt menu choice) and piled buttery carrots and leeks, peas and tiny broad beans beside it on his plate. He was ravenous, and he supposed it was the hard work and fresh air.

  All had gone well until Jennifer had disappeared to the loo and Ray had ambled back out to the yard.

  ‘Thank you for inviting me,’ he said to Brenda with his best smile. ‘And providing supper too.’

  ‘I didn’t invite you. It was Jennifer.’

  He remembered the headbutting sheep and felt the need to fight back. Even Matt Harper would react to that rudeness, wouldn’t he?

  ‘I sense you don’t like me much, Mrs Roseby,’ he said.

  ‘You’re very direct.’

  Oh no. Really I’m not.

  ‘I try to be,’ he said, endeavouring to meet that drilling blue gaze.

  ‘Well, maybe you do … but I have to think of Jen. You’re here for a while and then gone.’

  He thought how clever that was: implying it was the fact he was passing through that she objected to, rather than something about his character.

  ‘I don’t see why that should stop me being friends with Jennifer.’

  She gave him a long, assessing look. ‘So it’s just friendship you want then, is it?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said and terminated the conversation by feigning interest in the lamb-cam. It showed Danny and Ray and a load of sheep. As an idea for a reality show, it was rubbish.

  When Jennifer returned, the rest of the meal passed without any more headbutting, but he knew Brenda was watching his every move. He purposely kept up a stream of chat with Jennifer, not that it was hard, and tried to enjoy the plum crumble. As coffee was put in front of him, he thought of the weird, chaotic meals his mother had used to assemble with bits and pieces that never quite went together: corned beef and peas; tinned tuna and baked beans.

  The only time Brenda really smiled was when the door opened and what Mack took to be a passing Valkyrie came in, a large baby in a pink snowsuit on her hip. Brenda’s face looked as though it belonged to a sunnier person, and she suddenly had the baby in her arms and Mack was not sure how it had got there.

  The Valkyrie almost broke his hand when she shook it and he discovered she was Danny’s wife. He wondered how much strengthening their bed needed with those two in it.

  ‘I should really think about getting home,’ he said. ‘Let me help you with the washing-up before I go.’

  Brenda, as he had calculated, would not hear of any delay-making washing-up, and she showed an almost rude haste to say her goodbyes. He got a warmer send-off from the others, Ray telling him to come back any time he wanted – next time they might not be so busy – ‘Normally we just stand around leaning on a gate and chewing grass,’ he said.

  Jennifer walked him up the track to the road, shining a torch ahead of them, and he knew now, in the dark, with the memory of the warm kitchen still in their minds, was the perfect time to move things along.

  ‘Thanks for taking my mind off my Sonia,’ he began.

  ‘There’s no need for thanks. Happy to help. Are you still … I mean, talking?’

  ‘Yes, bit wobbly, but where there’s life … Do you think I should send her some flowers? I was a bit sharp with her on the phone about not coming up.’

  Jennifer’s voice came back through the dark. ‘Yes. But ring her afterwards to say sorry too. Best not to assume one bunch of flowers will do it.’

  ‘Sensible advice.’ He left a little gap to give the impression he was thinking and was acutely aware of the sound of Jennifer breathing, the cool of the dark around them. ‘Tricky, isn’t it, having to rely on the phone?’ he tried. ‘I find it hard to say what I want to say, not just to Sonia, but to friends as well … if I was at home I could just go to the pub, chat to them. The miles between us all make it difficult.’ It was a little hook in the water and if he was in luck, Cressida and how far away she was would come up.

  ‘You can always talk to me,’ Jennifer said. ‘If you want to.’

  Great; wrong fish on the end of the line.

  They walked for a while, listening to the sheep bleat in the fields around them, the torch picking out stones and bits of sheep poo.

  OK, time for the ‘give and take’ approach – I’ll confide in you about something and maybe you’ll offer me some titbits in return.

  He stopped walking. ‘You know, I would like to talk to you, Jennifer, if that was a serious offer. I …’ Another pause as if he was dredging up the courage to go on. ‘Thing is, my girlfriend isn’t staying away because she’s busy: she’s punishing me. She wants me to give up writing, the walking books, the novel, and get a proper job with a proper wage. I’m not sure she really understands how much I love what I do.’

  Oh Hell, my girlfriend doesn’t understand me. You can do better than that.

  Jennifer made a kind of agreeing noise. ‘It’s hard when people don’t get what makes you tick,’ she said slowly, and he noticed how she was keeping the beam of the light from her torch down as if it was easier for her to talk in the dark. ‘That’s why … that’s why I think Cress only goes out with other actors or people in the business.’ She started walking again, and he was careful to slow the pace.

  ‘Yes, I can see that makes sense,’ he said.

  ‘It does, but mixing work and pleasure has its downside, means you can never get away if things get tricky.’

  ‘Do things ever get tricky for Cicely? She seems such a strong person.’

  A little laugh. ‘Cressida. And yes, she’s only human, of course she has problems. At the moment she’s doing a film with this guy Rory Sylvester.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t think I’ve ever—’

  ‘He’s big, believe me, and he’s taken a shine to her, which is complicated enough, but add in a very jealous wife … Cress is working just as hard at keeping her sweet and not slighting him, as she is on acting.’

  Is she, now?

  ‘Poor Cressida.’

  He was hoping for more, but Jennifer stopped walking again.

  ‘You know what you were saying about your girlfriend wanting you to give up writing?’

  ‘Um … yes.’

  ‘Well, you never know when you’ll have a breakthrough. One TV show was all it took with Cress to make it happen. Matt, I’d say unless you’re absolutely forced to give up something you love, don’t do it.’

  If her tone at that point had been self-pitying he could have shrugged it off, pressed her a little more on Cressida, but it sounded like hard-won advice to him.

  When he said goodbye at the road he turned on his own torch and sprinted up the road, pretending he had bags of energy, what with him being a keen walker and everything, but by the time he got to Peter Clarke he was nearly on his knees. He sat and congratulated himself for surviving and getting that little nugget about Rory. Was it all starting to kick off?

  Laboriously clambering into a standing position, intending to ring O’Dowd, an image of Jennifer going home to sleep in the bedroom she’d had as a child and already left behind once swamped his mind.

  He tried to push it away by pulling his own mobile out of his pocket. There was a missed call from Tess. Just what he needed, a reminder of why he was doing all this.

  ‘Hi,’ he said, forcing himself to sound energised, ‘you’ll never guess what I’ve done today. Only delivered a—’

  ‘Mack!’ Tess said, and he heard the wobble of fear in the way she said his name. ‘Mum’s had a fall, sometime this morning, we think. I found her when I went round just after lunch. She’s in the Royal United with a broken leg; they’re having to pin it.’

  CHAPTER 21

  As the train reached Doncaster on his way back north, Mack found it hard to believe it had only been three weeks since he’d done this journey for the first time. He felt years older, probably older tha
n Mr Armstrong. The past two days alone had added a good fifty years to his life.

  He had arrived at the hospital to be greeted by Tess, who had put her arms around him and cried. If, at that point he could have scooped her and her whole family up and taken them away, he would have done.

  When he had soothed her, great clouds of guilt accumulating over his head, he had learned that Phyllida had not been on some paralytic bender when she fell, but had simply stumbled backwards over a bag of shopping she’d just put down on the kitchen floor.

  But Mack was in no mood to cut Phyllida any slack. When Joe arrived to join them, Mack was pleased to see that he too seemed to have hardened his attitude.

  ‘It wasn’t the drink this time, Tess, but it’s going to happen, isn’t it?’ Joe said. ‘And she’ll have you in here too with all the extra work and worry.’

  After going in to see Phyllida, who barely acknowledged that he’d travelled the length of the country to see her, Tess and he collared a doctor to discuss their options.

  It had been like trying to knit fog. With the spectre of patient confidentiality flapping around him, the doctor had hidden behind general terms and hypothetical cases. The message was that they couldn’t ask for help on Phyllida’s behalf, unless they could prove she was mentally incapable of asking for it herself. All the doctor could do was point out to Phyllida that her children had concerns, highlight her physical condition and see what happened during her hospital stay.

  When Mack told Phyllida what they had done, she went as ballistically ape-shit as it was possible for anyone with a broken leg to go, shouting that he had no right to talk to the doctor behind her back, that it was ridiculous to suggest she had a drink problem. Perhaps he should try getting his own life in order? Had he messed up that book opportunity yet?

  Mack was glad when a nurse came and ended the skirmish, as he was having to fight the urge to tip her out of bed and break her other leg. He joined Tess and Joe in the waiting room.

  ‘We’ll have to have her live with us when she comes out,’ Tess said, looking at Joe for confirmation, ‘she won’t be able to cope on her own for a while.’

  ‘Just till I get back from Northumberland.’ Mack looked at Joe too. ‘Another three, maybe four weeks. I’d come back earlier if I could …’

  Joe grunted and picked up one of the magazines on the table next to him.

  After Tess had gone to collect the girls, Joe put down the magazine. ‘You and I need a heart-to-heart,’ he said and in his straightforward way told Mack that he didn’t believe he was writing a travel book, that he thought he was up to his old ‘slimy tabloid’ tricks, and that if he did anything to hurt Tess or the girls he would never, ever forgive him.

  Mack had looked at Joe’s scuffed knuckles and the way his wedding ring dug into his finger and had been tempted to tell him the truth and assure him that it was to protect Tess and the girls that he was back in the tabloid swamp, but in the end he couldn’t. He lied and blustered and stuck to his story and when Joe got up and said he’d wait for Tess in the car park, Mack couldn’t blame him.

  The rest of his visit had been more of the same: Phyllida snarling at him, Tess crying on him, Joe looking at him like he was scum. Back in his flat, lying in his own bed, he found himself wanting, actually wanting to get back to Northumberland and lose himself in the nicer person he was up there. Well, the nicer person he was pretending to be. Most of all he wanted someone to talk to. Someone gentle and funny and understanding. Doug would have done. Jennifer would have been better.

  Jennifer.

  He looked out of the train window and then back at his script. Books down when he got back – at least he’d be word-perfect in the play, even if in real life he was always speaking with a forked tongue.

  His last view of Phyllida, after a frosty cheek had been slanted towards him to kiss, had been of her asking Tess to go and get her some tea from the machine. He thought of Tess wearing herself out over the coming weeks, of what that meant for the girls and for Joe, and then he thought of Jennifer again. Jennifer, who was coming to him slowly and surely with her little confidences and big blue eyes. He felt as if he was holding up a set of scales with his family in one bowl and Jennifer in the other, and it was madly tilting first one way and then the other and making him queasy.

  Why couldn’t Jennifer toughen up like he’d had to? She needed to stop going around like a blue-eyed, injured Bambi and settle down with that Alex bloke and forget about drama.

  She was his get-out-of-jail-free card and to think of her in any other way was like naming your lab rat.

  By the time he got to Newcastle he felt gritty-eyed with frustration and anger, and he snatched at O’Dowd’s phone when it rang as he walked over the station concourse.

  ‘Hear your mum’s taken a bit of a tumble, my son.’

  ‘News travels fast,’ Mack said tersely, wondering just who O’Dowd had got checking up on his family.

  ‘Poor old Phyllida.’

  ‘She’s not that much older than you.’

  ‘I was talking vodka age, not real age.’

  Mack switched off the phone, not caring that he’d get a tongue-lashing later and put his bag in Left Luggage before going out into Newcastle. He was looking for something and not sure what it was. He pushed through groups of leery lads in short-sleeved checked shirts and girls dressed in tiny scraps of clothing and high, tip-tapping heels. The whole city seemed alive, and he remembered it was Friday night. It was like walking though twittering birds and suddenly the twittering solidified into someone shouting ‘Matt!’ and he saw Lisa calling to him from the other side of the road.

  He’d never seen her in full warpaint, or with so little on. He dodged through the traffic and was engulfed in a vibrant, cheeky group of girls, and it seemed to him they were as drunk on the night and what it might bring as they were on the trebles for a fiver they’d necked. The smell of perfume coming off them was nearly overpowering.

  ‘Come here, you,’ Lisa said grabbing him round the neck and planting a kiss on his cheek. ‘How did it go? Get your girlfriend sorted?’

  There was an exaggerated ‘Oooooh’ as Mack wondered what she meant. Had Doug thought it was a crisis of the heart that had sent him scurrying off? He’d better put that right, he needed that girlfriend. He looked at Lisa’s face turned up towards his, at her little pillowy lips and the way her breasts were swelling against the material of her vest top and said, ‘No, didn’t get her sorted. It’s all off. Finished. Over.’

  Now he knew what he needed tonight: Lisa. The perfect way to forget everything pressing down on his shoulders. She was carefree and alive and up for it.

  He could not miss the little smile from her as she said, ‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ and then they were being swept along to the next bar, Lisa introducing him to the girls who all seemed to work for the council. Lisa explained who he was and what he did, and that ‘though he dresses like a tit, he’s lush’. They all agreed, and who was he to argue as they screeched past some seriously scary bouncers and into the thumping heat of a bar.

  ‘Don’t worry, I’ll look after you, Matt,’ Lisa said, her hand resting on his thigh, ‘only it can get a bit wild. Better take your fleece off, you’ll look soft.’

  He was tempted to tell her he’d been to parties where people snorted coke off the breasts of glamour models, but he smiled politely and played to the gallery by asking where he could hang his fleece.

  ‘On them chapel hat-pegs,’ one of the girls said, thrusting her breasts towards him, and he looked suitably shocked and offered to buy the first round. They liked him even better after that. He watched them knock their drinks back and knew he’d have to pace himself.

  After a couple of drinks they were off again, this time to a bigger bar, where they squeezed themselves next to a huge group of blokes who were all wearing T-shirts for someone’s stag do. Soon the two groups were mixed up; one girl who Lisa said worked in Housing Benefits was snogging a guy with a neck as wide as his head. />
  ‘First strike to Natalie,’ someone shouted, and that seemed to call for another round of drinks. Mack poured half of his surreptitiously on to the floor, but when he was lifting what was left to his mouth a lad knocked into him and spilt the rest down his shirt.

  ‘Buyyouanothermate,’ the lad slurred.

  ‘It’s all right, there’s no need.’

  ‘Buyyouanotherfuckin’drinkmate,’ the lad repeated, clutching the front of Mack’s shirt. ‘What’swrongwith-youse?’

  Lisa rescued him and after that the evening speeded up as they went to other bars, drank different drinks, lost some of their group and gained new people. He felt himself getting more and more drunk, no matter how much he sloshed down his shirt or tipped on the floor and Lisa was definitely getting more touchy-feely. Her hand was on his thigh, on his bum. He felt himself respond to it.

  In the street someone stopped to be sick and next time Mack saw them they were drinking a pint of lager. There was a fight between two groups of lads. He lost his fleece, and then Lisa shouted something that seemed to be the name of another bar and they all started to hurtle towards it, but suddenly, it was just him and Lisa drinking shots near a roped-off area where through the gloom it was possible to see long-legged orange women and champagne bottles and people who, Lisa informed him breathlessly, played for Newcastle.

  Lisa made an attempt to get over the rope and was turned back by a bouncer. However much she pursed her lips and pouted she couldn’t blag her way in. Mack knew he could if he put his mind to it, but not tonight.

  ‘They’re just people,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘Usually vain, selfish and not very bright. Not as nice as you.’

  ‘Don’t care,’ she said, looking sad and defeated. ‘Just want to be on the other side of that rope.’

  He used one of his last twenty-pound notes to get her a glass of champagne and felt her good mood return. She snuggled up to him and then they were off out of the bar and careering along a cobbled street that twisted its way down to the Quayside. He was aware of passing smartly dressed, quieter couples, returning from the theatre or dinner, but it wasn’t that side of Newcastle he craved tonight. Soon he was standing in a drunken queue of people, most of them shouting or singing and waiting for a kebab.