That Was Then

by That Was Then (retail) (epub)

  That night Ben called to say he was going to spend the night at Nozz’s. I could have dialled to see where he was calling from, but I chose not to.

  On Monday I called in sick, something I never did. My integrity at work was legendary, I never appropriated so much as a paperclip from Bouvier’s, let alone their time. But this morning integrity had rather lost its lustre.

  Trying not to think too far ahead, I drove up the hill to Headlands. In this encounter, unlike my recent exchange with Charles McNally, I intended to rely on instinct. My face, hands and feet were cold; I kept yawning with anxiety. If I had ever wished to bring Sabine down a peg or two, to shake her famous composure and rattle her cage, this was not the means I had envisaged. I actually dreaded what I was about to do, because I was doing it to all of us – to Ben, Sabine, me, her family and mine, and all our friends. It felt as though I were about to bring about the end of the world as we knew it.

  It came as a shock to encounter Sophie, of all people, in the drive, getting into her Mini. As soon as she saw me she came over, smiling broadly.

  ‘Hello, how are you?’

  ‘Not so bad.’ How could she not tell? How could she not know?

  ‘She’s in there – it is Sabine you’re after? – yes, she’s in there, handing out grief to the indoor plants people. I’d better rock off, I’m late.’

  ‘Bye Sophie.’

  ‘Tell Ben I’ll call …!’

  She executed a rasping three-point turn on the gravel and was gone, the Mini accelerating alarmingly as it went down the hill.

  The front door wasn’t quite closed, and I could hear Sabine’s voice in the hall. I pushed it open and went in: an interloper again, but this time she saw me, and widened her eyes in a smile of greeting while still pouring contumely on the hapless plants man. Clea, watering flowers halfway up the stairs, gave me a politely anxious smile.

  ‘… no I’m sorry I am not satisfied, because what you have sent is not what I ordered. I should like those plants that I did not order taken away this morning, please, and replacements here by the end of the day, otherwise I shall be demanding my money back and it is very doubtful that I shall be using you again.’ She waggled her fingers at me, left her hand in the air as she listened with bored impatience to the excuses on the other end. ‘No, no, you are not paying attention. It is very simple. I want the matter put right. I want two standard bay trees and a weeping fig here this afternoon and the rest of this clutter removed. Otherwise I want it all to go, and my money refunded. Good morning.’

  She put the phone down and beamed at me. She was positively sparkling – nothing improved her humour like a spat with the trades people. Or almost nothing, I reflected bitterly.

  ‘What a lovely surprise – are you on holiday?’

  ‘No, I called in sick.’

  ‘Come and have a cup of coffee.’

  ‘Not for me thanks.’

  ‘Do you mind if I do, I need it after dealing with those idiots …’ She walked away from me towards the kitchen and I followed, unable from habit to break into her self-absorbed prattle. ‘Would you prefer tea, Eve, I have some Lapsang and some Jasmine …?’ I shook my head. ‘You know Mrs Moss, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Mrs Moss, the occasional help, who was cleaning silver, ‘we’ve met before.’

  Mrs Moss was one of those women who, though certainly younger than either of us, seemed old at heart. The wording of her greeting was ominous, as though she had something on me which she would reveal when the time was right. It flashed across my mind that perhaps she knew – but no, if there was one thing Sabine would consider absolutely sacrosanct it was the separateness of the lower orders. Nothing would ever have taken place while any domestique was within snooping distance.

  ‘Mrs Moss,’ said Sabine. ‘Are you ready for a cup of tea?’

  ‘If you’re making one.’

  Any fears I had that we were going to have to sit here making small talk with Mrs Moss until she returned to her Silvo were shortlived. The idea would never have crossed Sabine’s mind.

  ‘Come along, let’s go and be comfortable,’ she said.

  Mrs Moss got out her cigarettes. ‘Cheerio.’

  On the way Sabine called up the stairs, ‘ Kettle’s on, Clea!’ and gave me a woman-to-woman smile that said her responsibilities were unending.

  We went into the conservatory. Everything in here was white, cream, and blonde wood, and I was about to spray filth all over it.

  Sabine, too, was in white – loose trousers and a sleeveless shirt tied on the waist.

  ‘So what is the matter with you?’ she asked, smiling.

  It was only much later that I realised she’d been enquiring about my health.

  ‘I want to ask you about Ben,’ I said.

  ‘What about him?’ Her smile was unchanged. She took a sip of her coffee.

  ‘About him – and you.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Now the smile was still in place, but it was tissue-thin.

  ‘I don’t think I’m wrong.’ My voice was coming from a million miles away.

  ‘About what, Eve?’

  She used my Christian name as she’d used that ‘please’ to the men on the phone – as a weapon. That one word told me irrefutably that I was right.

  ‘About what is going on.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ She turned to put her cup down. There was the suggestion of a flush on her cheekbone.

  ‘I believe there is something going on between you and my son.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous!’ She flicked at the immaculate trousers. ‘Ridiculous!’

  ‘Yes it is. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.’

  She sat with her head turned away from me. The silence was only intensified by the hoover starting up in some distant area. I had absolutely no idea what Sabine was thinking, or feeling, or what expression might be on her face.

  ‘Sabine?’

  ‘Yes, it’s true.’

  It was a relief, in a way, to hear it. A relief from tension, but a giddying, plunge into the greater unknown.

  I tried, without success, to say something, but I had lost not only the words – what words could express this tumult of confusion and despair – but the voice with which to utter them.

  To make matters worse, when Sabine turned towards me her look was one of coldly burning defiance.

  ‘It is true.’

  I think, now, that we believe our family and friends only exist in the spotlight of our experience – that is what we choose to believe. Life would be hell if we knew who they were, how they behaved and all that they said for the much greater part of time when they are away from us. Sabine’s words did not simply confirm what I already knew, but made shockingly real her other, proper, life. And, by implication, my son’s. In other words, I knew next to nothing about either of them.

  It was I who lowered my eyes first. ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘There is nothing.’

  ‘Or too much,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where to start.’

  ‘Before you make any accusations,’ said Sabine, ‘ remember that Ben is an adult.’

  ‘What?’

  She spread her hands. ‘If he were not living at home you would know nothing of his life.’

  ‘What are you trying to say?’

  ‘He has not been led astray or corrupted or anything of that sort. He entered willingly into our relationship.’

  She was being grand with me. It was unconscionable.

  ‘Sabine! You are one of my best friends. You are a married woman. Does Martin know? And what about Sophie? I thought Ben and Sophie were—’ I fumbled – ‘going out together?’

  ‘They are.’

  ‘But you and he—’ Again, words failed me.

  ‘It is not the same thing.’

  ‘You’re telling me it’s not! What about Martin?’

  ‘He knows nothing.’

  ‘Then he should do! I hope you don’t expect me to keep your sordid little
secret, Sabine, because I see no reason why I should.’

  Her left eyebrow rose, infinitesimally. ‘ It is not only my secret, surely.’

  ‘Ben’s half your age – less than half your age – the responsibility rests with you.’

  ‘Responsibility for what?’

  ‘For your adultery with someone young enough to be your son – your stepdaughter’s boyfriend.’

  ‘He wanted me, Eve.’ She couldn’t keep the purr of satisfaction out of her voice. ‘ He pursued me.’

  ‘And that’s all it takes, is it?’

  ‘Not all, no. Your son is adorable.’

  I couldn’t ignore it, the treacherous caress of flattery. And that made me even angrier.

  ‘But Sabine, it’s wrong. Didn’t you ever say to him – this is wrong? Didn’t you think of anyone else – your husband, Sophie, me? Well?’

  ‘Often. But never at the right moment.’

  She was rubbing my nose in it, the smug French bitch.

  ‘Don’t dare take that line with me,’ I snarled.

  Mrs Moss appeared in the drawing room behind us. ‘That’s it, all done.’

  ‘Oh thank you, Mrs Moss.’

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow then.’

  ‘A demain. Au revoir.’

  ‘Bye Mrs Piercy.’

  I wondered how much she’d heard as she padded across the hall in her trainers. Sabine’s ability to adapt her face and voice to circumstances was frightening. What a fool I’d been.

  We waited until the front door closed behind Mrs Moss, and then Sabine said:

  ‘Have you spoken to Ben about this?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Why not? I should have thought you would have talked to him before coming up here.’

  ‘I wanted to hear it from you first.’

  The eyebrow again. ‘Were you afraid he might lie to you?’

  ‘I didn’t want to accuse him of anything that I wasn’t certain of.’

  ‘Eve – you have no right to accuse him of anything.’

  Her arrogance was breathtaking. ‘Don’t tell me what rights I do and do not have. Ben is my son.’

  ‘But he is also a grown man.’

  ‘A young man, of twenty-one, having a relationship with a married woman twice his age who happens to be – who was – my friend.’

  ‘All of that is true, but it is not your place to make accusations.’

  ‘I shall do whatever I want!’ Why, when I was so sure I was in the right, did I sound like an hysterical child? And why, when she was so patently in the wrong, was Sabine contriving to emerge with her dignity intact?

  I got up to leave. She followed more slowly. When I reached the front door she was standing in the drawing-room doorway, her arms folded.

  ‘You are going to tell Martin?’ I asked.

  ‘That need not concern you,’ she replied, almost gently. ‘But you must speak to Ben.’

  ‘Stop giving me advice.’

  She gave a one-shouldered shrug. ‘I cannot speak for him.’

  ‘Did I ask you to?’

  She looked down at her shoes. I left and closed the door.

  Nothing had been as I expected. I had, I realised, been spoiling for a scene, and been denied it. The messy explosion of guilt, remorse and self-justification that I’d dreaded was actually what I’d been looking forward to. It would have cleared the air. Instead, the atmosphere was more stifling than before. Was she really not going to tell Martin? And had she really meant it when she said Ben and Sophie were still together? Could those things be separated out?

  By Sabine perhaps, but not by me.

  It was a long day. I spent it prowling about, lying on the bed in despair, and writing a letter to Sabine, setting out more cogently and in vastly greater detail what my feelings were about her and Ben. At six-thirty, Jo rang up to ask how I was. Without thinking, I told her fine.

  ‘Ah – diplomatic illness, then.’

  ‘God, I’d forgotten all about it. Yes.’

  ‘My silence doesn’t come cheap, you know … Eve? You OK?’

  I got a grip. ‘A bit depressed, that’s all.’

  ‘Want to come out for a drink?’

  ‘That’s sweet of you but no thanks, I’d be rotten company.’

  ‘Let me be the judge of that.’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘OK. See you – when I see you.’

  ‘I’ll be back in tomorrow.’

  The other person to ring was Sophie. ‘Is he back yet?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you get him to call me?’

  ‘I’ll tell him you rang,’ I said, knowing it wasn’t the same thing, and putting the phone down.

  I was sitting on the sofa surrounded by the scribbled pages of the letter when I heard Ben’s key in the lock. I shuffled the paper together and he walked in as I was closing the desk.

  ‘Aha!’ he said, in a mad professor’s voice. ‘The secret journal, at last I know where you keep it! Mum …?’

  I had dissolved into tears.

  ‘Hey, take it easy, what’s occurring? Come on …’ He put his arms round me. It was a rite of passage – him comforting me like this – and it did not make what I had to say any easier.

  ‘I’m OK-please—’ I disengaged myself and went to the kitchen to fetch a tissue. When I came back, mopped and blown, he was sitting on the sofa, still in his leather jacket, gazing expectantly towards me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said.

  ‘Don’t mention it.’ He patted the cushion next to him. ‘Come and sit down and tell me all about it, I could do with hearing someone else’s problems.’

  I didn’t sit down by him but on the chair opposite.

  ‘Body language is a touch ominous here,’ he said, smiling, still trying to tease me out of my depression.

  ‘Ben,’ I said. ‘I want to tell you that I know about you and Sabine.’

  ‘Oh.’ He didn’t move at all, but the smile died, leaving his face drawn and curiously exposed, like a woman’s with the make-up scrubbed off.

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘I saw you – in the pool on Saturday.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘And then I went round to Sabine’s this morning. She didn’t deny it.’

  He whitened. ‘You went to talk to Sabine? Before you talked to me?’

  ‘I was angry, Ben. More angry than I’ve ever been, and I still am.’

  ‘Yeah, I know just how you feel.…’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘For God’s sake!’ He bounced to his feet and towered over me. ‘And I thought we had a pretty good relationship! How could you go up there and talk to her as though I were a child?’

  It struck me that this was pretty much the same thing Sabine had said.

  ‘You are my child!’ I shouted back, ‘And she was my friend!’

  ‘Shit! I don’t believe this!’ He was furious and it frightened me. His reaction, like Sabine’s, was not what I’d been expecting. I’d anticipated high emotion but not this blast of withering rage. ‘So what the fuck did you say to her?’

  ‘Don’t swear at me Ben!’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That I was sure the two of you were having – whatever you want to call it – a thing, an affair, a relationship, and—’

  ‘And? And?’

  ‘And I took exception to it! I was outraged! Ben, how could you do this to me, both of you but especially you!’

  ‘Christ!’ He banged his fist so violently on his forehead that it left a red wheal on the white skin. ‘Why does everything have to revolve round you? Neither of us have done anything to you.’

  ‘How can you say that?’ Although we weren’t touching I felt that we were engaged in a physical battle; that I was clinging to him, trying to hold him still so I could look into his eyes as I had when he was little, but now he was too strong for me and simply shrugged off my attempt to grasp him. The roughness with which he did so shocked me.

  It had, I suppo
se, been a rhetorical question, but when he didn’t respond to it I still felt impelled to repeat myself.

  ‘How you can say that, Ben? You’ve both of you lied, and cheated, not just me but other people—’

  ‘When did I lie to you?’ He leaned over me, cold and fierce, his finger pointing rigidly at my face like a knife threatening to mark me. ‘Go on. When did I tell you a single lie?’

  I managed a bitter little laugh. ‘You didn’t need to tell a single lie, Ben, you were living one.’

  He stepped back and pushed his hands into his jacket pockets in a bruising gesture of self-restraint. ‘I see. You want to know everything, do you?’

  It was a trick question, and we both knew it. I hesitated, and he gave me a quick scornful look. I felt it scorch me just before he left the room, and the flat, and slammed the door after him.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I stayed up into the small hours, hoping to talk to him again when – if – he came back. The silent emptiness of the flat was agony. I realised how used I had become to anticipating his return, to knowing that the two separate wheels of our lives, while turning at different speeds and in different rhythms, still interlocked smoothly where they touched. How much, I now wondered, was that smoothness due to blind ignorance?

  I fell asleep on the sofa and woke to find him standing in the doorway as though he’d been there all the time. He wore the same clothes, but his face was darkly unshaven and he carried an old sports bag with a broken zip, from which bits of clothing protruded.

  ‘I’m off then,’ he said dully.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘Nozz has got a spare mattress.’

  ‘Ben—’ I got up stiffly, scraping my fingers through my hair – ‘Ben, please don’t go – please.’

  ‘You just don’t get it, do you Mum?’ His voice was no more than a whisper.

  I wanted to hug him, to implore him to stay, but the bad stuff was beginning to seep like black ink into my system.

  ‘No Ben, you don’t get it. If you don’t understand why I was so upset, why I was so devastated, then I can’t explain it to you.’

  ‘Oh, but I do understand.’ He patted my arm lightly – it was worse than nothing. ‘That’s the trouble. I know where you’re coming from the minute you walk into the room. We’ve been around each other for too long.’