Ralph's Party

by Lisa Jewell

  ‘Why? Was it … was it … because you were drunk, high – what?’ Karl was talking calmly, rationally, genuinely trying to understand what had happened that night but still shaken by the image in his mind of Siobhan, his Siobhan, in the arms of another man, kissing him, her tongue in his mouth …

  Partly – well, no, not really at all. I was … I was thinking about it even before we started drinking, the minute I saw him, in fact,’ she gulped, feeling maybe she’d admitted too much but then realizing that this was just the beginning of what needed to be said.

  ‘Well, yes. He’s a great-looking guy, I suppose …’

  ‘Oh, Karl, stop it! Stop being so bloody reasonable. Do you think that’s all there was to it? You think I just liked the look of him and suddenly, after fifteen years with you I just thought, Oh, what the fuck, I’ll have him? Yes, he’s good looking, of course he’s good looking, but … but that’s not it.’

  ‘Well, then, tell me, Siobhan. Please tell me. Why?’

  ‘To show you that I’m still attractive, that other men, good-looking men, would find me attractive. I wanted to make you jealous, Karl. I know how immature that must sound, how … how stupid. I wanted you to stop me, before, when we were flirting, I wanted you to get angry, to be possessive, to think, That’s my girlfriend and if I’m not careful she’s going to have sex with someone else – but you didn’t. You were so typically Karl – so unfazed, cool, oblivious – so fucking smug! It didn’t occur to you did it, Karl, it didn’t cross your mind that someone else might want me? You just think I’m some great ugly inkblot, some fat bird that no other man would look twice at …’ She broke down in angry tears.

  ‘Oh, God, Siobhan, this is what we were talking about before, before we went downstairs tonight. Shit. I wanted to talk to you then but you were so angry, so defensive, you wouldn’t talk about it.’ Karl could feel tears welling up behind his eyes now. ‘Come over here, Shuv.’ He patted the empty bed beside him. ‘Please. I want to be close to you.’

  She got up from the dressing table and walked slowly to the bed, sitting gingerly on the edge, wanting to be close also, but still full of so much uncommunicated anger and resentment that she was unable to yield herself to him entirely.

  ‘Shuv,’ he began, ‘I’m not going to lie to you. You have put on quite a lot of weight. I’ve not mentioned it because it just didn’t seem important. Really,’ he added, registering the raised eyebrows and scepticism on Siobhan’s face. He took her hand. ‘You are the most beautiful woman in the world. And I’m not going to say “to me” because that’s not true. You’re beautiful to me, but I can also see that you’re beautiful to other people as well. I’ve seen the looks men give you when we walk down the street. You’re overweight, yes, but that doesn’t matter. I mean look at you – you’re magnificent, Siobhan – your hair, those blue eyes, the way you carry yourself, the way you are with people, your laugh. And when you’re naked you look voluptuous, feminine, round …’

  Siobhan was smiling now through her tears, a soft spot in the pit of her belly aching with pleasure.

  ‘I don’t want you any less, Siobhan, if anything I want you more. That night, that night when all this started, after the drinks at the Soly Sombra, I wanted you more then than I can ever remember, more than when we first met.’

  Oh, yes – that night. Siobhan had to tackle this now, while she was feeling able to talk honestly. She took a breath.

  ‘Karl – about that night. I want to explain.’

  He held her hand encouragingly.

  She continued. ‘It was that girl, that Cheri girl – you know, the one who lives upstairs. Well. When I saw her there at your drinks party and she looked so young and slim and beautiful and you were obviously so … so in awe of her, I just felt really inadequate and ugly, and later, when you were, you know, trying to make love to me, I just kept thinking that you wanted me to be her, that you were imagining I was her, that I was young and slender and smooth and … and … and that’s why I pushed you off me – I just couldn’t bear it. I felt so hideous – like a freak, like a whore or something, like a great fat whore. I thought that that was why you were being so passionate, because you were turned on thinking about her, not me, and – oh, God – does this all sound really pathetic?’

  Karl felt sick. What had he done? He was to blame. Why had he ever gone within a mile of that horrible, horrible bitch? He had the most wonderful girlfriend imaginable, a girlfriend who loved him and trusted him and cared for him. And his selfish, pathetic actions had forced her into the arms of another man. In a way he deserved this. He’d been plagued with guilt for months now, for what he’d done to Siobhan. It was time he paid the price for his treachery, his deceit.

  ‘No … no,’ he sighed, pulling her to him. ‘It doesn’t sound pathetic, not at all pathetic. I’m the pathetic one, Siobhan, not you.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Siobhan.

  ‘Nothing. Nothing. Just that you’ve always been the strongest one. Always. I’ve leant on you through the years, relied on you. It was you who made all the best decisions in our relationship. If it wasn’t for you we’d still be living in that grotty bedsit in Brighton, I’d still be trying to be a rock star, playing to a bunch of pissed eighteen-year-old students in a stinking union bar knee-deep in snakebite and vomit, convincing myself I was enjoying it, that I was living some sort of worthwhile life. You made me grow up. I’m a better person because of you, Siobhan. And I promise you, really, really promise you, Siobhan, that when we got home that night, when we were in bed, it was you I wanted, it was you I saw when I closed my eyes, that I felt under my fingertips, with my mouth, with my tongue. Only you. That girl, that Cheri girl, she’s very pretty, y’know, obviously but – oh God, Siobhan, it’s you I want, you I’ve always wanted, eight stone or eighteen stone … Well – maybe not eighteen stone!’ He laughed and Siobhan hit him playfully and let him hold her in his arms and love her and comfort her.

  Well, that wasn’t so much of a lie, about Cheri, Karl thought guiltily. Just selective truth, protective lying, protecting them, their love, their future. But, God, he felt awful, he felt so, so awful. He stroked her hair.

  ‘Jeez, Shuv, your hair’s full of stuff – bits of twig and grass and God knows what. Are you sure you were just kissing out there?’

  ‘Well, it was lying-down kissing, wasn’t it?’ she giggled nervously. ‘Karl, do you forgive me? You know, don’t you, it was nothing? It was me being childish and I used poor Rick to get at you …’

  ‘Oh, I shouldn’t imagine he minded too much. What man would, you devilishly beautiful woman, you!’

  They’d hugged tightly and properly then and talked into the night, talked about the last twelve months, about Siobhan’s unhappiness, and they’d made plans to make sure that Siobhan would be happy in the future, to make sure that never again would they allow their relationship to become stifled, silent and thick with unspoken thoughts. And then they’d made love, for the first time in nearly two months, and as Karl slid down between her breasts, Siobhan looked down at his mop of black curls and lay back and smiled.

  They’d heard the rumble of Rick’s Peugeot early the following morning – he and Tamsin had obviously thought better of hanging around to see what happened next – and spent a blissful day and night on their own in the enchanted chapel, talking, walking, eating and making love.

  The first thing she’d done when they got back to London on Monday was to phone her gynaecologist to arrange an appointment to talk to someone about their options for infertility treatments. During their late-night conversation in the chapel, it had transpired that Siobhan had been in denial about her inability to conceive for years; it had been a long-held dream, an assumption about the path her life was going to take, and when she’d been told it was denied her, she’d brushed the dream under the carpet like a shrivelled-up dead spider, bought Rosanne and decided to get on with her life, refusing to consider the option of fighting for what she’d always believed would be he
r natural right. Not, she understood now, the action of a decisive, pragmatic woman, but the action of a woman in shock, a woman who didn’t know what else to do. They would make the most wonderful parents, they realized that night. So many awful parents in this world, so many who didn’t deserve children, who didn’t want them, who hurt, stifled, spoiled and damaged their offspring. As they talked and basked in the warmth of their revived closeness they knew that they deserved children, they were ready for them, and they wanted them more than anything.

  The next thing Siobhan did, anticipating the advice she was bound to be given prior to any treatment being offered to her, was to enrol with her local Weight Watchers group. Funny, now she knew that Karl loved her any way she came it was so much easier to make the decision to do something about her weight. For herself, not just for Karl; for their future, for their baby. And, more practically, in the short term, so that she could resurrect some of her lovely old clothes from early retirement and throw away her horrible leggings. It was boredom that had led her to overeat, the hours and hours spent at home on her own, with a fridge full of unhealthy food, eating meals alone, huge plates the size of a funeral pyre, without the constraints of the embarrassment of someone watching her.

  She and Karl had decided that she needed more to do, she needed to be busy, too busy to eat, so she’d put an ad in a bridal magazine advertising her dressmaking services. The ad had only been in for a week and she already had three commissions. The phone rang every day with enquiries from prospective brides, and she was turning the spare bedroom into a proper bridal room.

  They’d discovered the hard way that the ease that had always been the bedrock of their relationship had also been its undoing. They’d never discussed things in any great depth because they hadn’t needed to. Siobhan had always decided when to move on, and Karl, compliant and utterly full of faith in her foresight and wisdom, had followed blindly. He’d been too blind to see when the time had come for him to take the lead and take Siobhan firmly by the hand and into the future, their future.

  It had been hard for Karl to come to terms with what had happened between and Rick and Siobhan that night on the banks of the loch. He’d had to control a lot of rather unpleasant feelings of jealousy and he really didn’t like the emotion at all – it was alien to him, against his nature. But he’d managed, somehow, and now he was feeling strangely touched by the revelations that night at the chapel, touched that, for once, Siobhan had needed him. He was being called on to be a man, called up for service almost, except his country didn’t need him, his lover did, and he felt proud and strong and ready to do whatever was necessary.

  He felt very grown-up, and it was a great feeling. He wanted to spend some money on the flat, get rid of all the studenty artefacts and shabby bits of old furniture they’d brought with them from Brighton, take the posters off the walls, buy some light shades for the bare bulbs, buy a really nice duvet cover, maybe take out the horrible orange plastic bathroom suite and put in something expensive and Italian.

  He couldn’t be a rockabilly for the rest of his life; he was thirty-five years old: if he had children, their schoolfriends would tease them for having a father who looked like Bill Haley. It would be painful, but he was going to do it – go to the barber’s and ask them to remove his beloved quiff and sideburns. On the bright side, it wouldn’t take him so long to get ready for work in the mornings, and he could stop using that Black and White gel that Siobhan hated. Maybe build some cabinets for his oversized record collection too; the yards and yards of neatly stacked rows of records currently dominated their living room, like some dubious modern-art exhibit at the Tate Gallery. They were a trophy, a testament to his life to date. It was time to hide them, maybe even sell some. Time to move on.

  They’d been so happy for so long that Karl and Siobhan had forgotten to press Play after depressing the Pause button of their lives – they’d been stuck in the freezeframe for years, transfixed by its perfection, by the smiles on the faces of the people in it. It had taken that night in Scotland to remind them that there were new scenes to come, new developments to be worked through and that the important thing, the most important thing in the world, was to keep the film moving, whether the film had a happy ending or not.

  Karl’s work was going better, too. He’d been called to Jeff’s office on his return to work on the Monday afternoon, and he was smiling. He’d just received the latest ratings and figures were up for Karl’s show – only a fraction, but enough to suggest to Jeff that it would be best to leave things be for a few weeks, give things a chance to settle down, see how the figures went. ‘Keep hold of the tape from Glencoe, though,’ he’d said, ‘Rick tells me you came up with some blinding stuff – keep it, just in case.’

  But Karl felt confident that they wouldn’t need the tape. The following week’s figures had shown a further increase and he felt sure that the trend would continue. He didn’t mind playing the odd bit of Top Ten bilge to keep the younger listeners on board if it meant that he could educate them by playing pop classics in between.

  Karl had decided from the outset to be honest with Rick about the events at Glencoe. He liked him, he respected him and he wanted their relationship to work.

  ‘Rick,’ he’d said in the station canteen after his show on Monday, ‘I know what happened. I know what happened with you and Siobhan on Saturday night.’

  Rick had visibly receded in his seat then and stared down at his suddenly unappetizing plate of broccoli and cheddar bake. ‘Oh,’ he’d managed to reply in a voice a few octaves higher than his normal bass.

  ‘Look, I’m not the jealous type, Rick. I was a bit shocked, it has to be said. But I hear that you were very kind to Siobhan, offered her some very wise advice and, well, we needed it, to be frank with you. I just want you to know that I don’t feel bad about what happened, you know, that night …’ This wasn’t true. It wasn’t true at all. Karl still felt sick about what had happened, but he knew that if he allowed his jealousy to get a foothold the whole situation would turn in on itself and become negative. He had to keep things positive, it was the only way.

  Rick finally exhaled and began to regain his bulk. ‘You know, she’s a great girl, Karl, really, really …’ he said nervously.

  ‘Yeah, I know. I know.’ Karl didn’t want to hear this; he had no interest in Rick’s opinion of his girlfriend. He took a breath to control himself. ‘Look, all I’m saying is, basically, no hard feelings, eh? I respect you and I don’t want this to come between us, especially when it’s turned out to be such a … such a positive thing ultimately – for both of us, for me and Siobhan. We needed a kick up the arse – you know, we’d got stale, stuck, complacent, so anyway,’ he smiled then, and stuck his hand out to Rick, who took it uncertainly but gratefully and shook it hard, ‘forget about it – eh?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Rick, still feeling a little embarrassed by Karl’s candidness and his part in the situation.

  ‘So, how are things with you and Tamsin? She was a bit upset that night?’ said Karl, thickly buttering an insipid bread roll, wondering how much he could say to Rick about his patently unstable girlfriend.

  ‘Um.’ Rick gulped. ‘Gone … she’s gone.’ He spoke quickly, in that strange, high-pitched voice.

  ‘Oh, Jeez, mate, I’m sorry. What happened?’

  ‘Well, I told her – what happened.’

  ‘You told her! Why?’

  ‘Well, she guessed really. I woke up the next morning and she was just sitting at the foot of the bed, staring at me.’ He shuddered. ‘It was scary actually. And she was holding my clothes, from the night before, and they were sort of … dirty. You know, grass stains and stuff.’ He averted his gaze from Karl’s at that moment. He breathed in deeply and let it go slowly and audibly through puckered lips. ‘She just went fucking ape, completely mad, you know? Telling me I was a cock-sucking bastard motherfucker son of a syphilitic bitch – that sort of thing. I’m surprised you two didn’t hear, she was screaming so loud.’ />
  ‘Jeez,’ said Karl.

  ‘You know, I’ve been with Tamsin for six months, but I don’t think I know even half of what makes her tick. There’s a lot of stuff going on under the surface with her, d’you know what I mean? She’s got a lot of secrets, that girl, a hell of a lot of secrets.’

  ‘Hmmmm,’ said Karl. That was undoubtedly true.

  ‘I guess it’s just as well I found out sooner rather than later, eh?’ he added with a small, nervous laugh.

  ‘How are you feeling about it?’ asked Karl.

  ‘Worried, more than anything. I don’t know how she’s going to cope.’

  ‘Look, if she needs help, she’ll contact you. She’ll probably change her mind and try and come back. She’s a grown woman, she can look after herself. It’s the people who seem weak who are always surprisingly strong, and the ones who seem strong who are unexpectedly weak. She’ll be just fine.’

  ‘Yeah, I hope so, I do hope so. Oh, by the way’ – Rick dipped into his leather briefcase – ‘I … er … I brought this.’ He handed Karl the small silver tape recorder from the night in Glencoe. ‘I haven’t listened to it yet, and it doesn’t seem like you’re going to need it now, but you may as well have it.’ And then he’d passed the little machine to Karl who nodded his thanks and put it in his back pocket.

  Karl got up to leave and they shook hands. The cleaning-up operation was over for the time being; everything that had to be said had been said. Karl was glad he’d done it, glad he’d been so controlled, so mature. But he still couldn’t rid himself of the feeling that he’d like to take Rick outside and break his jaw.

  It had been a most, most excellent two weeks for Karl and Siobhan and now it was almost Christmas and Karl had left the ALR building in Olympia and was driving up Kensington High Street. It was dark, the streets glowing phosphorously orange, and the pavements on both sides were thick with shoppers and slush from the snow that had fallen briefly that lunchtime and melted quickly in the brilliant white sunshine that had followed. A Salvation Army band played carols outside Barkers and the pleasant noise of shiny brass and scrubbed voices added to Karl’s already great sense of well-being. He miraculously found a parking space in Derry Street and quickly pushed his way as charmingly as possible through the dense hordes of shoppers towards the warm welcoming doors of the department store, fully appreciating the gorgeous gust of artificially warm air that hit him as he entered. He walked briskly through the perfumery department, avoiding the plastic-faced assistants wielding large bottles of headache-inducing fragrances and headed through to the quiet inner sanctum of the jewellery department. This was no good, he thought, eyeing up the display cases of oversized pieces of gold and amber and cubic zirconium, they were all costume pieces, gaudy and garish.