Glover's Mistake

by Nick Laird

  ‘Ruth, everything all right?’

  ‘Oh no, fine. Sorry. I’ll be out in two minutes. Sorry.’

  He turned to pad up the corridor but the lock snapped back and she appeared. She’d taken her jacket off and was wearing a yellow vest that showed her shoulders, freckled and thin but tanned, un-English. Her eyes were just cuts now in marshmallow puffiness. She’d been crying and had washed her face; she still gripped a small black towel.

  ‘I’m so sorry, David. This is sort of embarrassing for me, and probably for you too. Bridget is being so difficult and her father…’

  She began to cry again and then moved towards him. The actual contact came as a shock. He’d kissed her cheek many times, and even once lightly pressed his fingers on her shoulder as they parted. But now they embraced, and he arranged himself in it, and felt her shoulder blades sharp on his forearms. Things were changing. He knew he would never see her in quite the same way again. In an instant she had grown beyond the abstract; desire was no longer theoretical. Touch is much more dangerous than sight, or little smiles, or honest conversations, or whispers about pictures in a gallery. Touch is how the real thing starts. He felt an overwhelming urge to protect her, to gather her up and keep her safe. Her slender body shivered as she exhaled a long sigh, and he gripped her tighter. She was so light. He could lift her so easily. The smell of coconut soap came off her hair and he breathed it in deeply, willing it to fill every cell within him.

  When she straightened up and stepped away he was almost surprised to find his body hadn’t retained the indentation of her form. Immediately she busied herself—arranging the towel on its rail, tugging off the bathroom light. She walked quickly and he followed. When she pulled a bottle of Pinot Grigio from the fridge he leant against the kitchen counter, watching. It seemed to him then that leaning against a kitchen counter was obviously the embodiment of style. He felt enormously powerful. If he so desired he could run a marathon or lift that fridge and throw it. Instead he handed her the corkscrew, the only visible utensil in the room, with a courtly flourish of his wrist. A hypnotic spell of domestic familiarity had been cast between them, then she broke it.

  ‘God, I’m sorry, David. I hope I didn’t make you feel…awkward.’

  Did he look awkward? It wasn’t awkwardness he felt. She gave a sad laugh, took a sheet of kitchen paper from a roll hanging on the wall and blew her nose loudly. This depressed him. He disliked hearing a nose being blown; he always attended to his own in private. A little of her mystique disappeared into that piece of kitchen roll, and it annoyed him that she didn’t care. He tucked his blue shirt back into his waistband where her hug had pulled it out, realized he had pushed it inside his underpants and rearranged it.

  ‘Oh shit, I’ve got mascara on your shirt.’ She raised a hand to brush at it and he stepped back, aware suddenly of the softness of his chest.

  ‘No, no, it’s pen, I think, it’s fine.’

  ‘Let’s get some glasses, sit down. Do you have cigarettes? Oh poor Bridge…She’s such a wonderful girl. But sometimes…’ She sighed and clinked the bottle down onto the coffee table, then turned back to the kitchen.

  ‘Teenagers!’ David half-shouted after her, and then regretted his banality.

  ‘Christ—she’s twenty. I think this is the way she’s going to be. Headstrong. Like her mother.’ She allowed herself an indulgent half-smile as she reappeared in the room, holding filled glasses.

  ‘What’s the actual issue?’ David said professionally, taking one from her and settling back in the sofa.

  ‘She wants to drop out of her acting course. Well, change to a teaching programme. And I don’t think it’s the best idea she’s had.’

  ‘You know, I came to see you once when I wanted to change courses. I stayed behind after a lecture. I’m sure you don’t remember.’

  David had always wondered if she recalled their conversation, and now he saw she didn’t, although she wasn’t going to admit it. She walked to the balcony door and looked out.

  ‘Of course I remember. You were going to switch courses…’

  ‘You were very supportive. You said I should do the thing I thought was right for—’

  ‘Oh, I know but, David, this is my daughter. You were some…’

  She couldn’t choose a noun and her indecision seemed to spark something unpleasant in her: she cried, ‘Oh, be realistic!’ and waved a hand at the window, the walls, anything that might be secretly encroaching on her life. David, mortified, stared hard at the arm of the sofa. He had become Bridget’s surrogate in the argument. Ruth sighed, then added softly, as if it should be a comfort, ‘I wouldn’t have cared what you did. I didn’t even know you.’

  She was upset. And even though he hadn’t for a moment thought her version of their chat would coincide with his, he felt her admission as humiliation. Here was his pedigree, here was his rating. He could go ahead and fuck his talent in the ear, he could give up art, teach English, but the meagre flame of Bridget’s gift should be somehow sheltered from the buffetings of salaries and standardizing test results, from buses and marking papers and the merciless alarm clock. A still, clear moment in his life. A kind of emotional vertigo—becoming suddenly aware of someone’s real opinion. Unsteadily, he set his glass on the carpet and stood up. Ruth was staring out of the window as he walked over to the shelving unit with its untidy stacks of books, piles of prints and photographs. As lightly as he could, he said, ‘I know that, of course. I just mean that maybe, you know, you should listen to her arguments and then—’

  ‘Her arguments consist of telling me I don’t know what the world is like. Look, David, I didn’t mean I didn’t care. I just meant—’

  ‘No, of course, I understand. It’s fine.’ He grinned enthusiastically, multiplying chins.

  ‘She has this thing,’ Ruth continued, swerving back to her own road, ‘that she wants to teach inner-city kids and change to an education major—she’s just spent the last three years in drama.’

  ‘Is this her?’ He’d lifted a small photograph off a pile of four or five of them on the top shelf. A stringy girl with long chestnutcoloured centre-parted hair. She had her hands in the praying position and was sitting cross-legged on top of a picnic table. Behind her, the columnar trunks of vast redwoods formed a solid backdrop.

  ‘God, no. That’s about twenty-five years old. Those are flares, David. That’s Jessica. You remember. She lives in New York. Her partner Ginny edits that journal—you should send some reviews there.’

  ‘She was very pretty.’

  He set it back on the pile. She had told him once about sharing a flat in the Latin Quarter with a girl named Jess.

  ‘Oh, she still is. Bridge is too, but even darker, like her father. Dark and mean.’

  She sat down neatly on the sofa and pulled her legs up, hugging her knees to her chest. David had just realized that there was no sign of food preparation, no preheating oven, nothing. He felt his stomach tense. It was listening very carefully as he asked, ‘What about dinner?’

  ‘Ah, that’s the other thing. Can we cut out and grab something?’

  The first person plural

  Ruth had seen a little Chinese place, the Peking Express, not far from her flat and wanted to try it. That they were the sole customers became apparent only after entering. David wanted to leave but Ruth had already settled on a table in the corner, beside the aquarium. The tank was coffin-long and faintly stagnantlooking, and as various fish twisted their sad eyes to David, he got the definite impression that he was there for their entertainment and not the other way round. In greeting he parted and closed his lips at the glass. A scarlet fantail jerked away, billowing flamenco skirts.

  Just as the waitress arrived at their table Ruth was telling David about Bridget’s mad plan to marry her boyfriend, Rolf, and she lifted the palm of her hand to ensure quiet until she’d finished. The waitress, a Chinese girl of about seventeen, dutifully stood there, head down, as David tried to shoot her a pleading, apologet
ic look. When Ruth delivered the kicker—And I said, darling, I remember what it’s like to be twenty, but no feeling’s for ever—the waitress palmed a small gold lighter from a pocket in her skirt and lit the stubby candle, then gave a neutral lethal smile.

  ‘I think we need another minute.’

  Ruth had a knack for touching on questions that encouraged self-examination, and over dinner she asked about David’s relationship with his parents. He found himself talking about rejection, about disappointment and resentment. Ruth interrogated softly, and as he was speaking he realized he was actually learning certain things about his life.

  He didn’t think her interest was compensation for her earlier, peremptory response. Unlike David, she couldn’t feign successfully, or not for long. She was not nice, that damning adjective, and her curiosity, when it came, was undiluted by politeness. Instructed since birth in the cardinal virtues by a joyless Calvinist mother, David barely knew what interested him any more. He was sure of how he should behave, of the questions he should ask, of suitable responses. But he’d had enough of that. At least if Ruth appeared intrigued by something, it was simply because she found it intriguing. She might be a slave to her id, to insistent desires, but she wasn’t boring. There was no ritual in her conversation and no taboo. Nothing was beyond analysis and articulation—over dinner she told him that she thought his mother probably hated him on some subconscious level because he tied her to his father. David felt Ruth and he were pulling close, aligning themselves, and the fit was remarkably good.

  This was why men went mad for her. She looked at David with such intensity that he could believe he was the centre of her universe. It was not need: that would have been off-putting. But she gifted him the rare belief that he was special. He was the millionth visitor. He was the only one who understood, the only one she wanted, the only one to save her.

  Her continuous low-level anxiety was brought to the surface by the usual liberal flashpoints. The environment. Her own ageing and death. American foreign policy. She assumed his politics, of course, as she assumed most things, but he didn’t mind. The waitress appeared with more wine and her assassin’s smile. David watched two tiny neon-blue fish dart like courtiers around a large black catfish. It slowly turned its ribbed underbelly towards their table and began grubbing on the dirt that clouded the glass.

  As they left the restaurant, the two waiting staff and three chefs lined up like the hosts at a wedding (‘Goodbye, we see you soon’). Ruth had insisted on leaving the change from her fifty, which meant the staff got a tip of fourteen pounds eighty. The food was completely average, but if the mood took her, she could be crazily generous—although her absent-mindedness, more often than not, left a wake of insulted and unthanked, the doored-in-the-face. She may have lacked intent, but culpability resides also in neglect: David was sure of that. He felt several things about her simultaneously. Her worries and concerns were all near the brim, so he found he forgot how fucked up and desirous, how petty and distraught he himself usually was. She let him know that he was not abnormal, by which she meant alone. The two of them were in this thing together. It was seductive, that, to be appropriated to someone’s side. He could imagine that his interests tied in entirely with hers. As to what she saw in him, he wasn’t sure. He knew she thought him entertaining. He was one of the amusingly crucified, and plainly devoted to her. He figured that she might enjoy his obvious delight when the conversation turned to art, to books, to anything that might broaden and sustain the mind. And maybe she was lonely too.

  Out on the street she slid her arm into his. He squared his shoulders and straightened his back, possessive of this creature by his side. A cairn of black bags was heaped on the pavement by an overflowing litter bin and they swerved to avoid it. The last few yards had passed without speech. David was in a small reverie of contentment, thinking how he had, belatedly at thirty-five, met someone he found interesting, met someone who was doing something. His life had turned a corner. Their footsteps made a pleasing beat, which he was about to mention when she drew his arm a little tighter and said, ‘I need to say something. I know you’re going to think it’s crazy, and I do too…believe me…’

  Her tender tone and the wished-for words accelerated regions in his heart. He squeezed her arm back as she whispered, ‘Do you think…I mean I think there might be something…’

  She paused and David felt the shiver rise within him. He lifted a hand to his chest as if that might be enough to keep the blood pumping and the whole thing in place.

  ‘Something between James and me…’ She stopped walking then, pulling him to a stop, and looked up into his face to examine his reaction. He yanked a fierce smile from somewhere. He felt cold, distant from himself: the real David was a many-legged scuttling thing, climbing up inside his body and now peering out with sad despair through the windows of his eyes.

  ‘Oh God, you’re outraged, right? Is it outrageous? I know it’s a little crazy, but…’

  ‘The thing is…’ He started walking again, looking forward, almost dragging her down the street. ‘And I know, because we’ve talked a lot, he finds it hard to trust…’ David made a preposterous gesture of holding a weight in his open hand. It might have been his ousted heart.

  ‘Yes. He’s told me about that, about college.’

  Had he? When? Each time David left the room did they change gear to intimacy, then slow up again to casual acquaintances when he returned? Were they telepathic? Email. They were chatting on email. How nice for them.

  ‘He’s such a sweet man. He’s so…sincere.’

  ‘Earnest, you mean? Yeah…not like us.’

  She turned her head and gave David a curious look—it was almost a flinch of injured pride; but then she saw the vanity of that move and turned the thing into a joke on herself.

  ‘No, exactly, not like us. We’re cynical old things.’

  David wanted to disentangle his arm from hers but thought that might reveal too much. He succeeded in jollying himself along, but all he wanted was to be out of her presence, to get home and climb into bed with a pint of wine and a spliff. Things began to draw clear. She had asked questions about the two of them living together, about how David had met him, about where Glover was from, but stupidly, idiotically, shamefully, he had thought he was the focus. She chattered on emptily now about how ridiculous it was, and she was sure that nothing would transpire but she just wanted to say something, she needed to say something, she felt something between them, and what did he think? Over and over. And then the childish denouement: he was sworn to secrecy. Then they were standing at the bottom of the rock face of her apartment block, and over-eager to prove himself unfazed by the news, David found he had asked her round for dinner next week. When they had settled on Thursday, he added, ‘And I actually will cook for us.’

  Ruth laughed and then there was an elongated pause, as the first person plural hung in the air and both of them wondered if it might include Glover.

  Two in the afternoon

  Buddha’s bogus smile

  David decided not to tell James about dinner, but it made no difference. Maybe she emailed him and mentioned it, or maybe Fortuna, in the earthly guise of the Bell and Crown rota, decided to give him the night off. David didn’t know and never asked. By the time he’d dragged the shopping home on the Thursday evening, he was sweating and tired and dejected. The shower was running and a few minutes later Glover appeared in the kitchen doorway. Relaxed, barefoot in jeans and a T-shirt, he seemed fresh and new, the hair glossy and spiky, and he watched as David unpacked the groceries. On hearing that Ruth was coming for dinner, he acted neither surprised nor especially pleased, rubbing a palm up and down the door frame as if sanding it. He offered to help with the cooking but David said no, he was fine, and the TV went on. When the intercom gave its buzz of static David ignored it and Glover took the stairs down one by one, in no particular hurry.

  He was listening hard as they ascended but heard nothing until they entered the flat. T
he dynamic felt immediately different. When he came out from the kitchen Glover had already taken her coat. Her perfume seemed stronger, a pleasant, singed citrus, her hair was newly cut and dyed, and he was sure her make-up was more pronounced. Black form-fitting satin trousers showed off her trim behind. Leather stack-heeled boots added an inch or two of height. A large tiger-stone pendant drew the eyes to the V of her grey cashmere V-neck, and its deep cut of tanned cleavage. Time had been taken. Money had been spent. It was premeditated, David thought, like the worst kind of crime, but she did look good, and she did smell good, and when he kissed her hello and gave her a hug, platonically quick, she felt wonderful too.

  As he finally slotted the casserole dish in the hot yawn of the oven, David thought that this was easily the nadir of his year so far. He had another month for it to get worse, of course, but tonight he was on a date, as the chaperon, in his own living room. He was about to watch the only woman he’d been even vaguely interested in for years make a play for his flatmate. And he was cooking for them. He downed a glass of Something Blanc and reluctantly went in. The conversation was about Suffolk. Ruth tended to talk, David knew, to one person. When you were chosen you became her solace, her intimate confrère in some subtle plot against the whole thick-witted world. She watched you and read you, responded only to you. Such was the exclusive nature of her consciousness, operating in daily life through a series of mini-love affairs. David knew the intense joy of being concentrated on like that! Together they would sit and worry at a subject until something, however small, was clarified, but if you weren’t elected, if you were secondary, then it meant you had to sit and wait, woebegone, and watch, and throw remarks like popcorn at the principals.