That Was Then

by That Was Then (retail) (epub)

  ‘But you can’t just take off like this!’

  ‘Watch me.’ He began heading for the door. I followed, almost running.

  ‘What are you going to do – about Sabine?’

  ‘Mum—’ He’d opened the door and stood there, effectively barring my way. ‘Please – cut it out.’

  He closed the door very quietly after him, but the shock was as great as if he’d slammed it. I stood stock still, listening to his footsteps going down the stairs.

  I made tea. I washed and changed. I called Jo and said I was really ill this time, and was taking to my bed. She believed me.

  I was wronged, injured, mortified. It would not have been too much to say my world was in tatters. And yet Ben and Sabine, the guilty parties, the wrongdoers, had between them contrived to make me look like an hysteric.

  I rang Ian at the office.

  ‘I need to talk to you urgently, it’s about Ben.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘No – not over the phone.’

  ‘I could make lunch.’

  ‘All right, shall I come there?’

  ‘Yes. Eve—’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ve got to go into a meeting, now. But I’d like to be prepared. On a scale of one to ten, just how bad is it?’

  ‘Nine point nine nine recurring.’

  ‘All right. I’ll see you later – get them to call up when you arrive.’

  I drove up to London this time, because I needed something to do. And besides, the car afforded privacy. I could play music to suit my mood, on a day when every sad song seemed written for me. I could weep, wail and gnash my teeth and other road users would see nothing but a metallic grey Toyota travelling a shade too fast in the outside lane.

  Of course all this changed as I came into town. Every junction and traffic light had its attendant array of bored drivers with nothing better to do than stare. I turned the music off and effected repairs with a tissue in the driving mirror.

  Ian’s office had some limited staff parking at the back, in which he always used to wangle me a space. In spite of everything I was touched to discover that he had done so again – his obliging PA, Anthea, must have moved her own car on to a meter at his expense.

  The receptionist said he’d be down right away. Full marks to her, she greeted me as charmingly as always, blotchy face and all, and I had to accept that this was in no small part due to Ian’s own popularity in the company. Whatever the vicissitudes of his private life, everyone at Inline thought the world of him.

  He came out of the lift looking pale and preoccupied, kissed me on both cheeks (how odd that two kisses are more formal than one), and took my arm as we left the building.

  ‘I told Anthea to hold my calls,’ he said. ‘Let’s just go to Joe’s shall we?’

  If I had been more myself I would have found the choice of Joe’s Place quite unbearably nostalgic. It was where we used to go when we couldn’t afford the time or the money to go anywhere else. The menu, of a moussaka-and-chips kind, hadn’t changed in twenty years: the smell as we entered was pure time travel.

  ‘OK,’ said Ian as we sat down in a cracked-leather booth, ‘ We’re going to have a stiffener, we’ll order, and then you can go ahead and wreck my day.’

  He was as good as his word. Within ten minutes I was filling up with an emotional Bulgarian red, my Cumberland sausages in cider lying neglected and cooling on the plate, as I told Ian the whole sad story.

  He listened attentively, closing his eyes and shaking his head from time to time, but managing, I noticed, to consume all of his risotto.

  ‘So there it is,’ I concluded. ‘A nightmare. I feel as if everything’s just blown up in my face.’

  ‘It’s not good, I grant you.’

  ‘Not good? Ian, what are we going to do?’

  He laid his knife and fork together. ‘Do?’

  ‘Yes – I don’t know where to turn. I don’t know how to behave, how to arrange my face – I’m going to pieces over this—’ My voice broke and he took my hand firmly.

  ‘No one’s suggesting it’s your fault, are they?’

  ‘No one’s suggesting anything, I don’t suppose anyone even knows yet. But obviously they’re going to—’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because Littelsea’s a small town, and these things get around! I think that gruesome ex-girlfriend of his knows already, something she said to me the other day …’

  ‘I have to say,’ said Ian, withdrawing his hand and laying his crumpled napkin by his plate, ‘that the opinions of Ben’s former molls will not be causing me to lose any sleep.’

  ‘Will you talk to him?’ I heard the pleading note in my voice and despised myself for it. ‘Maybe if you talked, you know, man to man.’

  ‘I will, of course, if that’s what he wants.’

  ‘I’m not bothered about what he wants, it’s a case of what he should be doing!’

  ‘Eve …’ The tilt of his head told me Ian was embarrassed by my loudness. ‘Eve, don’t get me wrong …’ My heart sank. ‘I don’t condone what Ben’s done, but I don’t condemn it either. I can’t honestly say that I condemn Sabine, either, which is more to the point.’

  ‘What?’

  The angle of his head grew more acute. ‘Would you like to go back to the office we’d have a bit more privacy?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘How about some coffee?’

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘Look.’ Ian cleared his throat to herald a fresh start. ‘It’s a bit of a shocker I grant you, but I do think we need to keep a sense of proportion about it. I mean God knows, these things happen. The fact that it’s our son and someone we know brings it a bit closer to home, but it doesn’t make it any worse, per se. I for one am not about to put on a hair shirt because of it, and neither should you.’

  I felt as if the walls of Joe’s Place, with their cheerful Picasso prints, were beginning to tilt inwards.

  ‘So you’re saying you’re not going to do anything?’

  ‘I don’t think either of us should “do” anything in the way that you mean, no.’

  ‘And you won’t talk to your son about this?’

  He closed his eyes, exercising patience. ‘On the contrary, Eve, I’m quite sure he and I will talk about it. It’s hardly the sort of thing, once known, that one can ignore. Apart from anything else I should think he’s pretty unhappy with the state of play himself just now.’

  ‘Jesus wept!’

  ‘But if – but if you mean will I play the heavy father, the answer is absolutely not. It’s never been my style, or yours come to that, and this is hardly the time to change.’

  Everything he said, now, was making me more furious. ‘Who said anything about being heavy? You’re deliberately misinterpreting me.’

  ‘I was venturing my opinion.’

  ‘I will not allow you to simply sit up here with your lady friend and be benign and liberal and forgiving while I take all the flack and do all the dirty work down in Sussex’s answer to Peyton Place!’

  His face closed down on me. I’d gone too far and we both knew it. ‘ I’d be very sorry if I really believed that’s the way it was, Eve.’

  ‘Me too,’ I mumbled with a poor grace. ‘And I don’t want it to happen.’

  We sat there in silence for a moment while the waiter took our plates.

  ‘Will you change your mind about the coffee?’

  ‘OK. I’ll have a cappuccino.’

  ‘And a double espresso, thanks.’

  Ian watched as I filled my glass, but covered his own with his hand.

  ‘Let’s be practical for a moment,’ he said. ‘Does Martin know what’s been going on?’

  ‘Sabine said not.’

  ‘We shouldn’t set too much store by that. He’s pretty astute.’

  ‘So you’re saying – what?’

  ‘I’m just trying to work out where any potential difficulties may lie.’

  ‘The potential difficulty is
how I’m going to conduct my life down there with all this happening.’

  ‘Yes.’ Ian cleared his throat. ‘If you want to put it like that.’

  Under the influence of the blushful Bulgar, rage was beginning to give way once more to self-pity. ‘I’m not putting it like anything, Ian. Am I the only person on the planet who can see that this is an appalling situation and likely to get a lot worse before it gets better?’

  The coffee arrived.

  ‘I refuse,’ said Ian tensely when the waiter had gone, ‘to make a drama out of a crisis.’

  ‘So you admit it’s a crisis?’

  ‘It’s a form of words. I’m not going to engage in histrionics.’

  ‘You’re saying that’s what I’m doing?’

  ‘Eve – for goodness’ sake.’

  ‘I can see I’m wasting my time,’ I said, and got up to go. ‘ Eve!’

  I stormed between the tables quite effectively, but the fresh air stopped my grand departure in its tracks. I was still hovering giddily in the doorway when Ian caught up with me, having no doubt tipped lavishly to compensate for the untouched coffee.

  ‘Come and have a coffee in comfort in my office why don’t you?’ he suggested. I allowed myself to be escorted back there. Anthea, good as gold, simply said ‘Hello Mrs Piercy!’ and began loading the cafetière.

  The little walk had caused us both to change gear. My physical symptoms were now far outweighing the emotional ones, and I began eating Ian’s tasteful bowl of mint creams as though they were the last food on earth.

  ‘Poor love,’ said Ian sympathetically. ‘You’re right, it’s a bummer. Shall I send Anthea out for a sandwich?’

  ‘No thanks.’

  ‘I’m bound to say I don’t know how happily those will mix with the plonko rosso …’ he ventured.

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘No, please, feel free, but just don’t – ah, here’s Anthea.’

  She was a wonderful girl, she’d made a pot of Darjeeling as well. I could understand any man dallying with his PA if she was like Anthea. I had mine with three sugars. Anthea and Ian conferred sotto voce about some messages that had come through, and then she left.

  Ian crossed his legs and ran his fingers up and down the crease of his trousers. ‘All I really want to say in my clumsy way, Eve, is that nothing is your fault. It’s not a conspiracy against you, or either of us. It will work itself out: messily no doubt, but no one’s going to die as a result. You really mustn’t take it all on yourself.’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  ‘And of course I’ll talk to the old boy. He’s due to come up and see me soon, neutral ground is always best.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You know, we’ve always been there for our two. But the real test isn’t when something awful happens to your child, but when your child makes something awful happen. Don’t you agree?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Speaking of which. Eve—’ I looked soddenly at him – anything more was getting to be an effort. ‘ I really wouldn’t be happy if you got back in the car.’

  Damn. How could I have been so stupid? And why, when he was usually so maddeningly punctilious in these matters, had Ian failed to remind me? Because, some distant voice of conscience murmured, he couldn’t face pouring petrol on the fire by curtailing my drinking.

  ‘No, well I won’t, of course.’

  He looked relieved. ‘Good. Take the train and we’ll sort out getting the car back tomorrow.’

  ‘I might spend the night in town,’ I said defiantly. ‘I’m not working tomorrow.’

  ‘That’s a good idea. You could do a show or something.’

  ‘I could.’

  ‘I tell you what.’ He opened his desk drawer and took out a bunch of keys. ‘Would you like to go to my place and put your feet up for a bit? Freshen up, make yourself at home, take a nap if you want to? It’s only a couple of stops on the tube.’ He removed one key from the ring and laid it on my side of the desk.

  ‘You think about it while I splash my boots.’

  I was tempted. Ian’s flat would certainly be clean and tidy, and the notion of kicking my shoes off and collapsing on top of a neatly made bed was enormously seductive. I leaned forward to pick up the key and noticed the family photograph he still had on the desk – it dated from a few years ago and it was of all four of us on the last family holiday we’d spent together. The holiday, on Corsica, had not been an unmitigated success, but we were smiling like good’uns for the co-operative waiter.

  There was a smaller photo in front of this. Oh yes, there she was. I felt as if I recognised her. She was dark, rounded, pretty, a ‘bonny Jean’ kind of woman.

  ‘Julia.’ Ian was back in the room.

  ‘Yes, I gathered.’

  There was an awkward pause. He came over and sightly adjusted the position of both pictures, establishing his right (I knew him so well) to have both of them there.

  ‘She won’t be at the flat, you know.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘She’s in Bournemouth at the moment.’

  ‘Right.’

  I didn’t know whether this meant that when not in Bournemouth she was at the flat, or whether the two remarks were unconnected. But Ian (he knew me so well) answered the unspoken question.

  ‘I’m on my own there.’

  ‘OK.’ I picked up the key. ‘Thanks.’

  ‘My pleasure. And look – I’ll order you a cab, company account.’ ‘Thanks.’

  The flat was functional, only marginally more personal than the office. If I’d been hoping for a bit of a snoop I was disappointed. It was about half the size of mine at Cliff Mansions and the kitchen was just a slot. There were lots of microwave meals in the freezer, but there was salad in the fridge and a bowl of apples on the table in the living room. It was furnished and fitted in an unexceptionable, colour-co-ordinated way. I guessed everything had been bought in a single afternoon.

  I didn’t pry in drawers, I didn’t want to. And interestingly there were no photographs here. He obviously wasn’t going to have us all beaming from the dressing table when he and Julia were on the job – and why would he need a picture of her when he was seeing her all the time?

  The one thing I needed was bread – drink always brought on a compulsion to carbo-load, and Ian’s Kensington creams felt as if they were bobbing about whole and undigested on my own personal wine lake … I looked for a bread bin, but there was none. There was a garlic loaf in the freezer but defrosting that seemed a bit extreme. No bananas, either. However, he did have a large storage jar full of the knobbly mixed cereal that looked as though someone had smashed a couple of dozen flapjacks with a hammer. I ate several handfuls, and then went to lie down.

  Lying down, like fresh air, is one of those things you think you need when you’re drunk, but which serves to bring home the reality of your condition in the most unpleasant ways. As soon as my head hit Ian’s well-laundered pillow I fell into something, but it wasn’t sleep; more like a parallel universe of gross discomfort. I swooped, I spun, I looped the loop, with my stomach following half a turn behind. I felt hot, and my mouth was dry, but I couldn’t clamber back into that state of full consciousness necessary to fetch a glass of water. My head teemed with fretful images of Ben, Sabine and Ian all doing strange things like riding horses and dancing the gavotte (there had recently been a Jane Austen adaptation on BBC1). The headache from hell rumbled like distant thunder in the background, ready to burst over me the moment I attempted anything rash, like taking my head off the pillow.

  When I eventually did so, wakefulness gave me the mauling I so richly deserved. The headache, the nausea, the giddiness and the dehydration were worse than in my sick fancies, and my earlier depression returned with the force of a piano falling down stairs.

  To make things worse, for a long moment I had no idea where I was, or even in which part of the country. It was almost dark, and until I fixed on the rattle of rain and the hiss of traffic on wet streets I thought it
was the middle of the night. I peered at my watch: it was twenty to six, quite late enough. The thunder, I now discovered, had not been a figment of my imagination – it was right overhead, and the next clap – dear God! – sent darts of lightning right through my head.

  Very slowly, creeping like a nonogenarian and holding the walls where possible, I made my way into the bathroom. I couldn’t bear to turn on the light, so felt my way to the basin and leaned over the cold tap. I took a few gulps and splashed my face. I didn’t bother fumbling for a towel, I liked the feel of the water and wanted to let it dry there. I couldn’t see a medicine cabinet, but somewhere, surely, there must be Ian’s store of everyday medication – aspirins and indigestion tablets, perhaps even those fizzy things for hangovers … I would go back and lie down again, propped up on the pillows this time, and gather enough strength for a proper, fully-lit foray in ten minutes or so.…

  So it was that I was creeping back in the semi-darkness, barefoot and with my waistband undone, my hair standing on end and water dripping from my face, when the door of the flat opened and there, silhouetted in a shaft of light that showed me up to full advantage, was Julia.

  ‘Good Lord,’ she said. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  Not half as sorry as I was.

  She didn’t put a foot wrong, of course. Just as I recognised her, so she at once recognised me, which was a little disheartening given the state I was in. She said this was only a pit stop, I said I was just going, and then she stood her wet umbrella outside the door and withdrew to the living room while I dragged myself together.

  When I came back she was sitting with her coat still on, eating an apple and watching the Six o’clock News. A perfectly judged cocktail of messages – I am at home here, but I am only passing through, I am a fact but not a threat. She needn’t have worried. Recent events had done her a great favour – in the space of a day she had moved several places down the anxiety listings, and at this moment I felt too ill for anything but flight.

  ‘Right, I’m off.’

  She put down her apple core and got up, dusting her hands. ‘Do you have an umbrella?’