The First Time I Saw Your Face
Page 31
‘Thought that would be your caring reaction,’ Mack said, getting to his feet, ‘which is why you’re about to understand that old expression: “Don’t care was made to care”. Phyllida and I have drawn up a list of all the women you’ve cheated on your wife with and put it in a letter.’ He looked at his own watch, glad to know O’Dowd would get the echo of his own action just seconds before. ‘What time does your post arrive at home?’
O’Dowd got to his feet and Mack saw him pull back his arm and got his own punch in first. It made his hand jar and sent a horrible pain up through his wrist and arm and then across to his still grumbling ribs. O’Dowd stumbled back into his chair.
‘I’ll have you and your mother,’ he bellowed.
‘Don’t think so. The list’s not complete: the juiciest ones we left off, like that MP who fiddled her expenses. Tut tut, there’s your sister paper bleating on about political corruption and there’s you getting your leg over in that big old pricy flat of hers. And it all goes on the internet if you try anything funny.’ He winked at O’Dowd. ‘We’ve found your Achilles’ heel, my son.’
Which was when the phone started to ring.
‘That’ll be your wife wanting to discuss the post.’ Mack stepped swiftly towards the door. Serena was standing outside. Probably listening.
‘God, you’re hard-faced,’ he said, and down in the lobby he punched the air and picked up the neat display of newspapers and scattered them over the floor.
Back in the café, Phyllida and Tess both stood up as he came in and Phyllida got the waiter to bring a large espresso while Tess held his hand tightly. It was the one he’d used to punch O’Dowd, but he didn’t mind.
‘You needn’t think I’ll stop looking out for you just because you’ve been demoted to half-brother,’ she said and then clicked her tongue. ‘Stupid expression, you’re a complete brother to me … complete pain sometimes too … but that’s why I love you. Makes me feel superior.’
Jen would have loved you. You’d have loved Jen.
Across the table Phyllida was watching him as he tried, with his free hand, to lift his coffee cup to his lips.
‘You’re shaking as badly as me,’ she said, before giving him what looked suspiciously like a kind smile.
CHAPTER 40
Jennifer had made it into work, lying on the back seat of Bryony’s car as they went past the journalists still hanging around near the road. There were fewer now – the real story was over in Hollywood – but Bryony accompanied her into the library through the back entrance just in case any were loitering there. Jennifer had pulled the hood on her sweatshirt around her face, and when a thin, bored-looking chap had stepped in front of them and said he was from one of the papers in Newcastle, Bryony had advanced on him executing a full-on Haka taught to her by Danny on their wedding night and taught to him on a rugby tour of New Zealand. The thin man had retreated so fast he had backed into a bollard and was last seen clutching his knee.
Once inside, Jennifer had gone straight to the upstairs office, where she had done very little all day except get used to being there. She would have found it hard to say which emotion, shame or humiliation, had gained ascendancy over her; both had combined to create a dark fug of misery which seemed to close her off from everyone else. How desperate she must have seemed to him. How easy to fool. He had smelled out the need in her and fed off it. There was no consolation in the fact that few people would know she had slept with Mack; that she was attracted to him had been obvious to a lot more.
She had been hunted down and cheated.
But all this was surface pain compared to finding the bliss of loving someone and being loved back was a mirage. There was anger and bitterness mixed in with that broken bliss, and maybe they’d come to the fore later, but right now it was her heart that was aching so badly that her hand kept straying to where her bra met the skin of her chest as if she could soothe it.
Lionel was studiously kind and thankfully did not make any suggestions regarding massage or other remedies and Sheila distracted her with stories of Reece’s latest exploits. She only mentioned the whole Matt/Mack thing twice; once to say, ‘Stop beating yourself up. I got sidetracked by that bum too,’ and ‘Funny, though, the way he looked at you from up in the gallery …’
Jennifer ate her sandwiches at her desk, not caring if they were ferret meat or rhinoceros and Bryony came to take her home. This time there was no thin, bored-looking man outside the library and fewer journalists near the farm. There was, however, a Land Rover in the yard.
‘Do you want to see him? Shall I put him off?’ Bryony asked.
Another person who had looked at Mack without lust-coloured spectacles and not been fooled. Anything Alex might say she deserved.
They sat together in the sitting room, Brenda maintaining a diplomatic distance down the hall and Alex told her he was very sorry she had been hurt and that as far as he was concerned Matt Harper was history.
She wished she could erase it all so easily from her heart, but she appreciated the sentiment and when he reached out and held her hand she let him. It felt safe and familiar and solid. Nothing like a mirage.
CHAPTER 41
Four weeks after running south, Mack came up past the Angel of the North and tried to convince himself that today its wings were spread in welcome and it was not living up to its nickname of being the rusty flasher. Although that would have been the greeting he deserved.
Past the block-like sprawl of the MetroCentre, with the sun shining off hundreds of windscreens in the car park, and then he was leaving the city and the suburbs, and the countryside opened out around him, absolutely at its blossoming, sumptuous May best under a wide blue sky smeared with wispy cloud. The beauty of the place tore at him and he could barely wait to get off the dual carriageway. Soon he was slowing to take the dips and crests of the lanes and then tearing along the Military Road, which lay like a straight spine along a great green back. He was high up here, the view unbroken off to either side, and now and then he passed walkers on Hadrian’s Wall. He remembered his first visit, when he had skulked about like a truculent schoolboy on a history trip, and added it to the pile of things he regretted.
His first sight of the road sign to Brindley made him slow to a halt and turn off the engine. He felt himself pulled by the desire to be there, like the wind was pulling those clouds, but turning up out of the blue was not the right first step.
He restarted the car and drove on, trying to concentrate on being positive, and for a few miles he distracted himself by thinking about Phyllida. Relations between them had been far less glacial since the O’Dowd revelation, and a couple of weeks before he headed north she had told Tess and him quite calmly that she thought a large chunk of O’Dowd’s cash, if they didn’t mind, should be spent on something that would really irritate him – there was a clinic on the outskirts of Bath that had a good rehabilitation programme for alcoholics, and although she didn’t think she was one of those (cue some serious shoe examination by Mack and Tess), perhaps a residential spell there might be in order.
Tess and he had waited for her to change her mind, or to dig her heels in once she was there, but neither of these things had happened. On his last visit to the clinic she had looked pale and exhausted, but had managed to smile wryly at the large glass of orange juice in front of her on the table.
Tess and he had decided to take each day without incident as a good sign.
Mack came to the familiar hump-backed bridge and the sharp bend in the road, and turned up the lane. The trees were in full leaf now, and he drove through light and shade to park near the pond. As he got out of the car, he repeated to himself the promise that he had made to Joe before he left Bath: no more lying, no more sweet-talking; no flannel, no flattery, no avoiding, no skulking round corners. He was going to keep that promise and do the things he had told Cressida he wanted to do. He would accept his punishment like a man. Maybe after punishment would come forgiveness.
Trouble was, now he
was here, Joe’s mantra sounded even scarier. He hesitated and looked towards the forge, a place with fire that burned and large, heavy tools that could cut and grind and beat. He thought of Jennifer and walked on towards the house.
‘Wasn’t sure you were going to get oot of the car,’ Doug said, opening the door. He had on a brown leather apron, and behind his ear there was a pencil. His face was expressionless, those big eyebrows still.
‘I was plucking up courage.’
‘Well now you’ve plucked it, fuck off. If you’ve come here for more dirt, I’m not selling.’
‘That’s not why I’m here.’ He knew it was important not to come across as cocky or assured. ‘I’ve come to apologise to people, particularly to Jen, explain why I did what I did and—’
‘Good acting, tosser.’
Mack remembered when he had been ‘marra’ not ‘tosser’ and felt his throat constrict.
Doug leaned against the door frame, folded his arms. ‘Good leather jacket as well. That new? Along with the car? You must have made a canny pile.’
Here we go, Joe, wish me luck.
‘I did. But the jacket’s old, the car’s hired. I’ve still got my debts. I did use some of the money for my mother’s, um, medical care. No … I’ll call it what it is, her rehab. The rest is in an account. For Jen, if she’ll ever take it from me.’
Doug gave a great whoop of laughter. ‘Regular saint, aren’t you?’
Mack pressed on, explaining about Phyllida and what he thought had happened with Sir Teddy Montgomery, but as soon as he got to the bit about it all turning out to be a lie, Doug snapped, ‘Very neat. One minute you have a canny reason for being a callous swine and then, vavoom, it’s gone.’
‘Maybe, but it’s true … and Doug? How is Jen?’
Doug was suddenly in front of him. ‘Want another bit for your paper about her, do you? What’ll it be? Something about her being gutted by her cousin’s choice of lover, maybe? Whereas we all know she’s gutted because of you.’
‘I love her, Doug, genuinely love her. It happened slowly, but I fell for her. I need to get her to understand that.’
‘Are you cracked?’ Doug thundered at him. ‘Can you imagine how painful it would be for her to see you again after what you did? It’s taken her this long to pick herself up and get back to work. She barely returns any calls. There’s a lot of anger around here about you. Go home before Danny knows you’re here. Or Alex.’
‘Alex?’
Doug grimaced. ‘Yeah, stepped right in to look after her. Now get lost.’
Mack felt his arm being gripped and suddenly he was facing away from the house and being marched towards his car. A push had him bumping off the paintwork. He turned round, expecting Doug to be right there, but he was striding back to the house.
‘Doug,’ Mack shouted, ‘I’m sorry, I did such a wrong thing here, but I want to put it right. I love Jen, hand on heart.’
‘Oh you’ve got one then?’ Doug called back and, without waiting for a reply, crossed the threshold of his house, turned and very precisely shut the door. That precision seemed to suggest, ‘You do not warrant my anger. I view you only with disgust.’
‘That could have gone better,’ Mack said to himself as he drove back down the track, his hands trembling on the steering wheel.
Two hours later he was standing in the park, looking at the main door of the library, willing it to open, and for Jen to walk out. And then he’d do what, exactly? He sat down on one of the seats but got up again quickly when he remembered it was the one he and Jen had sat on together after those men in the pub had insulted her.
No daffodils this time. The blossom was just going and there was some kind of flower he didn’t know the name of in the flowerbeds.
The thought of how exposed he was standing in the park made him look around to see if anyone was watching him. Pointless worrying really. News would get out that he was back, and then he was going to really have to honour that promise to Joe and take it all like a man. He calmed himself by concentrating on the war memorial and remembering that people had been through worse.
The abbey clock chimed four. A whole hour till she came out, if she was back at work. He’d go and see if he could spot her car around the back, perhaps wait round there.
He was suddenly face-to-face with those unnamed flowers in the flowerbed, something heavy and squirmy on top of him. He struggled and squirmed too until he managed to turn enough to see who it was.
Lionel? Lionel without his glasses?
‘Lionel, let me explain,’ he panted, trying to get out from underneath him, but Lionel’s method of fighting appeared to be to cling on like a bushbaby. All Mack managed to do was get on to his back with Lionel still grasping him, and the situation struck Mack as farcical until he felt Lionel’s knee in his stomach and let out a cry that had Lionel springing to his feet.
Mack stayed on the ground, on his side, his knees pulled up to his chest and waited for the blunt pain to subside. He tried to squint up at Lionel, who was bouncing around on his feet like a prize fighter.
‘I do not agree with physical violence, no, no, the last resort of the failed negotiator,’ Lionel wagged his finger in time to the delivery of the words, ‘but you asked for it, you … you cur.’
Cur?
Mack staggered to his feet and, in retrospect, decided his first words were a mistake, for he had no sooner got out, ‘How is Jen? I love her, Lionel,’ when he was sitting among the flowers again.
‘Don’t you mention her name,’ Lionel screamed. ‘You’ve just come back to gloat.’
‘No. I’ve come to apologise. To everyone.’ He flung his arms wide and Lionel, without glasses, must have mistaken it for a threatening gesture because he took a few steps back, shouted ‘Callous swine!’ and ran from the park.
Mack had soil down the neck of his shirt, his stomach and ribs ached and his leather jacket was scuffed all down one arm, but he didn’t think there had been any real damage done. He crawled over to the seat and pulled himself up on to it. Round One to the peace-loving librarian.
Jennifer ignored her mobile phone ringing and tried not to feel irritation at her mother. She’d already rung to see if she’d arrived safely this morning and again after lunch to check she’d eaten something. It was like being stalked. No, actually it wasn’t. That had been quite different.
If it wasn’t her mother ringing, it was Cressida. They were tortuous, stilted conversations these days. Cressida was always trying to dampen down her obvious happiness so that she would not appear tactless, and Jennifer underplayed her own misery. That deep connection between them seemed to have fractured. The last phone conversation had ended with Cressida in tears. ‘Jen me having Anna Maria doesn’t mean I don’t need you any more, you mustn’t think that. You never call me any more, it’s always me calling you.’
Jennifer had assured Cressida that she didn’t feel supplanted by Anna Maria; she was happy for both of them; glad that Rory had agreed to finish the film; delighted that Cressida was heading for a long break in Argentina after the end of filming. She would try to ring more often. She was fine, absolutely fine. Really.
Jennifer opened the office door and walked quickly to the top of the stairs. Every day was getting easier. Well, the working and walking and talking bit. Not the thinking bit. She still found herself teasing out every conversation she had ever had with Mack, seeing where he had fooled her, how he had wormed his way into her confidence.
She would not allow herself to think of that last day and night. His actions then were bewildering and she could not think of any motive for them beside pity or guilt. Who wanted to think that someone had slept with you because of either of those?
She should be voicing all of this to Cressida, but she couldn’t bear to bring him up, and her cousin never pressed her. She knew Cressida was being kind, but somehow it made her feel worse – as if what she had done was so incredibly stupid and naive that Cressida couldn’t stand to go back over it.
Sheila was still offering the odd monosyllabic reply when the door opened and Lionel walked in looking as if he’d been rolling around in a flowerbed. There was mud on the knees of his trousers, and his shirt, which was hanging out, had a tear in one sleeve.
‘Bloody Hell,’ Sheila said, putting the phone down quickly. ‘What happened to you?’
‘I had an altercation.’
Sheila frowned. ‘Is that a fight to the rest of us?’
‘Who with, Lionel?’ Jennifer was unable to grasp the idea of Lionel having a fight.
‘Someone I bumped into,’ he said, reaching under the counter for his glasses. ‘I know it’s not right, fighting, but sometimes a man’s got to stand up and be counted. Defend those who can’t defend themselves. Be brave.’
‘How do you feel?’ Sheila asked.
‘Quite shaky actually.’
‘Run and get him some camomile tea, will you, Jen?’
‘Of course, but who have you been fighting, Lionel?’
Lionel looked as if he was about to answer, but Sheila plonked him down in a chair and rammed his head between his legs. ‘Camomile tea now, Jen,’ she said firmly.
Jennifer went off to the kitchen, not really sure what to make of any of it, and when she came back with the tea Lionel was still hunched over on his seat.
‘I’m an animal,’ he said, ‘a complete animal.’ He looked so guilt-ridden that what with giving him his tea and sympathy, while also checking out books and answering queries, it was a few minutes before she realised Sheila had disappeared.
Mack was walking over the road with the intention of going to check on Jennifer’s car when he saw Sheila tanking out of the library towards him. Her language was indescribable and so was the pain when she grabbed him by the hair.