Lying Together

by Gaynor Arnold

  Stephen recalled the sinister adult certainty of the man, the frisson of fear he’d aroused with his heavy presence next morning at the breakfast table, Morella in her dressing gown meekly making him toast.

  ‘I called his bluff, Stephen. I said I didn’t care; that I was moving to London and that was that. I didn’t think he’d tell my mother. It hardly made him look good, after all. But he rang me, the week we finished Finals. You and Ian were out getting pissed and I was on my own. He said my mother was in hospital. Heart failure, he said. Something must have given her a shock. So I just got on a train to Edinburgh as quickly as I could. Sorry, Stephen. Sorry I didn’t think to leave you a note. Bigsby said he’d tell you …’ Tears started to roll from Morella’s eyes.

  Stephen cursed Bigsby. How had he managed to forget such a message? ‘And had he told your mother, this Rory?’

  ‘I don’t know, Stephen. She was dead before I got there.’ Morella was weeping loudly now. ‘She was all laid out on the hospital bed. I looked at her, Stephen, and I imagined that she’d died thinking I was the worst daughter in the world …’

  Stephen gave her a little squeeze. ‘You don’t know she thought that. He probably didn’t tell her anything. After all, why would he? It was his fault. Much more his fault. He was supposed to protect you, not seduce you, for God’s sake.’

  She shook her head. ‘It still felt like my fault. I went a little bit mad, then, taking stuff – uppers and downers; anything I could lay my hands on. It was Rory who looked after me. He was good at that sort of thing; had done it with my mother for years. I thought he was being a proper father to me at last, cooking my meals, keeping the pills away. But it didn’t last. One day he put his hand on my tits and said it was payback time. Then I knew it was him or me, and I just picked up the knife.’

  ‘You should have come to me. I would have looked after you.’ He stroked her hair – her poor, chopped, shorn hair. Its ugly, rough ends made him want to weep.

  ‘The last thing I wanted was anyone being kind, Stephen. I couldn’t have borne kindness.’ She looked up, wiped her eyes. ‘Some days I woke up and thought I was back in Madingley Road, and everything was simple again. You, Ian, Bigsby, Paul, Martin, Gavin.’ She smiled, then turned, suddenly: ‘Do you still see them?’

  ‘Not really.’ She didn’t query this, didn’t seem surprised he hadn’t kept in touch. He added inconsequentially, ‘Although I did run into Tom about a year back. He’s doing very well.’

  ‘Yes, Stephen. He would be.’

  Stephen remembered how the subject of Morella had come up; how Tom had laughed his confident barrister’s laugh, saying she was too neurotic by half. As he’d laughed back, Stephen had pictured Tom and Morella fumbling and thrusting in broad daylight in an alleyway behind the Green Dragon. He’d recalled it with devastating exactitude, like every occasion on which he had seen Morella disappear from a room with someone else’s boyfriend, or return home in the smudged and creased garments of the night before. He ventured: ‘He’s a bit of a prick.’

  Morella laughed bitterly. ‘Always was.’

  There was a silence. Stephen, driven by some envious demon, said, ‘But you fucked him all the same.’

  She shrugged, eyes wide open. ‘I fucked lots of people.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because you didn’t love any of them.’

  ‘Oh, love. It’s so much balls, Stephen, you know that?’ Her eyes flicked over the cone of flowers lying on the bed. ‘Or maybe not in your case. Maybe you’re one of the lucky ones, with your Sweet Sue. I expect you’re faithful to her, as well.’

  ‘I try to be.’ He’d never even been tempted to stray. But he felt on a knife-edge now.

  ‘Always the honourable man. You never overstepped the mark, did you, Stephen? Even when I was half-naked on your bed.’

  ‘I was supposed to be your friend, remember? The one you could trust.’ She frowned. ‘I know I said that, Stephen. But – well, I wasn’t conscious half the time.’

  He stared at her. ‘I wasn’t going to rape you, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Why not?’ she said carelessly. ‘Other people did.’

  His heart started to thump as he remembered her milky skin against the tousled bedclothes, the darker shape of her nipples showing through her pale green bra. ‘Well, don’t imagine I didn’t think about it.’ But he had never wanted her that way: limp, wasted, incapable of decision, lacking in any kind of joy. He imagined if it were his daughter in that state – vomiting and shoeless, knickers lost, blouse torn. He shuddered.

  ‘So what stopped you then, Stephen?’

  He paused, distracted by his own undeniable arousal. ‘Perhaps you were too much of a sex goddess.’ He laughed tightly. ‘Or I was too much of a gentleman.’

  ‘Well, you can do it now if you like.’ She looked at him directly, the dark line around each iris almost hypnotically clear. She leant forward. He could feel her breath as she started to unbutton his coat, loosen his tie, his shirt. He was almost suffocated by the intensity of his desire. He could feel her hands against his bare chest, then around his waist, his belt, his flies. Then she said, matter-of-factly, ‘I owe you something, after all.’

  He pulled away from her sharply. She looked up, saw his dismay: ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Is this just a payment for services rendered?’

  She shrugged, eyes wide and ingenuous. ‘It’s the least I can do.’

  ‘No.’ He slowly rose, started to re-zip and re-button, his fingers shaking. He felt almost ill with the combination of revulsion and desire. ‘Well, you don’t need to pay me back,’ he said roughly. ‘I’ll help you for free, Morella. For love, if you like. If you know what love means.’ He placed the wad of newly drawn notes on the chest of drawers. ‘I’m going home now. Thanks for a great evening. Just like old times.’ He couldn’t control the sarcasm in his voice. He felt a terrible, towering anger towards her. He wondered what he would have done if there’d been a knife handy.

  She said nothing. Just sat on the bed, gripping the edge, the small white hole in her tights now the size of a pound coin. He swept up the flowers with a vicious movement. She said in a quiet voice: ‘I’m afraid they’re dying.’

  He said, ‘Yes. It’s too hot in here. I should have known better.’ And he closed the door.

  Going down in the lift with its cheap fake wood and pinkish mirrored panels, he felt his anger begin to cool. The hotel was soulless and opaque. As he descended floor by floor, the doors pinging and opening on empty corridors, he kept visualizing Morella sitting alone on the chintzy bed. What would she do with herself tonight, tomorrow? And what would she do for the rest of her life? He’d been her last chance, she said. Her last chance on her flight from the dreadful past, the nightmare of incarceration and halfway houses. He imagined her opening her wash-bag, taking out a razor and cutting herself neatly across her wrist: Put out the light, and then put out the light.

  A cold horror came over him. He’d been stupid and immature, expecting anything romantic from Morella. She hadn’t come to find him because she cherished memories of the old days, but because of what he could offer – Mr Commuter with his expensive cashmere coat. She’d responded simply, as she’d always done; taking what she could, and giving the only thing she had to give. Morella had no scrap of romance in her soul: It’s so much balls. He felt a gale of compassion for her.

  In the foyer he eluded the knowing glance of the receptionist, went straight to the telephone box. Sue answered. Her voice sounded warm and real, and for the first time that evening he felt he could breathe properly. ‘I’ve run into an old friend from Cambridge,’ he said. ‘She’s in a bad way, needs a bed for the night. I’ve offered. D’you mind?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘And I’ve got you some flowers.’

  ‘Really?’ He could hear her smile.

  STAND WELL BACK

  I wish I’d never mentioned the damned thing now. I
never intended to. Just the usual first Thursday of the month drink: how’s the wife, how’s the job, that sort of thing. But Tim is the kind of bloke who gets things out of you. He always has, ever since we were schoolboys. His knowing silences always made me feel I had to say the first stupid thing that came into my head. The quieter he was, the more I blathered. The more I blathered, the more he smiled. It’s been that way, more or less, for twenty-five years.

  I eye him now across the table. His thinning hair, his worn shirt, his cockeyed spectacles, his worthy corduroy trousers – they’re everything I loathe. He’s gone down in the world since those prep-school days but he still behaves as if I’m the one who has to be patronized, even though I could buy and sell him three times over. It’s not as if we have anything in common any more. So why do I go on meeting him – a whole evening once a month just so I can go away feeling terrible? My sister Di says it’s survivor’s guilt, whatever that means.

  Tim’s going on about blood being thicker than water. I can’t believe it. ‘No,’ I say. ‘Absolutely not.’ I don’t like to think about blood anyway. It’s not what I associate with – well, with the whole Jane thing. So I object to Tim bringing it up. Of course I know why he has. Because although he helped me out, he never approved in the first place. And now he has a chance to say: ‘I told you so.’

  He puts his fingertips together, leans forward. ‘Altruism is all very well, but there’s a connection. An inviolable connection. And now it’s caught you out.’

  ‘Bollocks.’ I start to get up. I’ve had to fit Tim in between the office and a Kennedy concert. It starts at eight, and I hate being late. ‘I should never have told you. I knew you’d be critical.’

  ‘Not critical, Matthew. I just feel you’re not being honest with yourself.’ He gives me the pitying-but-encouraging look. He’s adept at it. He’s done a course on it. He’s someone with ‘counselling skills’. It makes me want to puke. As does the Welsh rarebit congealing on my plate with its forlorn sprig of parsley. Tim seems immune to bad food, having just wolfed down an enormous baked potato filled with bright orange chicken tikka and some kind of bean. A hint of orange clings to his upper lip now. His glass of Speckled Hen sits untouched.

  ‘Honest? For God’s sake, Tim! It was a simple transaction. That was the whole beauty of it. I’d no right to barge in after all this time.’

  ‘You may have been a bit, well, rash. But you must see you had a kind of right. An emotional right.’ (Tim’s strong on emotions, the inner child, all that jazz.) ‘All you’ve done is woken up to the implications at last.’

  ‘You would say that, wouldn’t you?’ I laugh. Tim’s the complete New Man, carrying his kids around with him in some sort of papoose, changing nappies on any horizontal surface to hand, reading bedtime stories for hours on end, volunteering for playgroup duty, and so on and so forth. Three little girls, all under five, and a fourth (sex unknown) on the way. We can’t afford it, but we’ll manage somehow. Children are the most valuable part of us, aren’t they? (Smile, smile) Ugh. I keep away from his little nest of domesticity as much as I can. It was a nice house once, Victorian, elegantly proportioned. Now it’s a kind of kindergarten. The kitchen’s impossible, even for a snack – awash with crayons and half-eaten cereal, littered with scribbled drawings which shed bits of glitter and dry macaroni all over the floor. The tiles are a death trap of rolling plastic and spilt drinks. It seems that every time I go, the girls (Tabitha, Freya and Edith) are bouncing about on the sagging sofas with cereal bars in their mouths, dribbling gunge onto my trousers, tugging my jacket out of shape in four different directions at once. In the midst of this, Saint Tim smiles pityingly at me: Look what you don’t have. I play the game, make jokes, pretend to be a good uncle (and I’m remarkably good at it), but I can’t wait to get out. Get back to peace. Privacy. Self. Yes, self, I admit it. I have no problem in admitting it. It may sound smug, but I like my life the way it is.

  Tim cocks his head. ‘But I’m right, aren’t I? Blood is thicker than water.’

  ‘You were always one for an original phrase.’ I’m sneering again. Tim tends to make me sneer. I could be really hard on him but something always inhibits me from going too far. We have our roles, I suppose. I grit my teeth.

  ‘You know it’s not originality that counts, Matthew.’ He smiles patiently, as if he has no idea how trite he’s being, as if he’s saying something incredibly worthwhile. Instead of which he sounds like a woman’s magazine, and a downmarket one at that. ‘It’s not the phrase, is it? It’s what lies behind it. That’s why you’re upset.’

  ‘I’m not upset, for God’s sake!’ But I can hear my voice rising up the scale, and I’m beginning to have that odd feeling again. This thing must really be getting me down. I grope for my wallet. ‘Look, I want to get out of this thing, not delve in deeper. Anyway, I’ve no time for your little homilies – I’m meeting Julia in the foyer in half an hour.’ I pull out a ten pound note. Eating with Tim is always cheap, but he insists on paying half, counting out his change in the tray of a little leather purse. I’ve given up trying to argue.

  Tim pats my arm, gently depositing some chicken tikka on the elbow of my new suit. ‘You’re in denial, Matthew. But believe me, it won’t go away.’

  I’d been mad even to risk it, although of course I never intended to. But when the Chief said we needed to go over to Charlie Gray’s home ground if we were ever to get him on board for the Runsgate development, that was fine by me. I don’t think I thought twice about it being Finsbury Park. Because, as I kept telling Tim, it honestly didn’t bother me. I’d told Jane I’d keep away, and my word is my bond. You’re so beautifully old-fashioned, she’d said, kissing my forehead. We’re so very, very lucky. I admit that in the early days there’d been the occasional telephone call, the odd scribbled note. I think Jane and Barbara had felt obliged – Barbara to a lesser extent, I imagine. But over the months, communication had stopped. And I’d been relieved.

  So all Finsbury Park meant to me the day before was a business venue, and a pretty inconvenient one at that. I was mainly concerned that we wouldn’t be stuck there all day, given the problems Charlie Gray was throwing up. I wanted to get done quickly and get back early. All my thoughts were on that. It looked like being a warm evening and I fancied sitting out on my balcony with a glass of Rioja, with the Thames in the distance and the early rush hour glittering past beyond the trees. As long as Nick Crisp didn’t let me down with the figures and allow Charlie to spin things out till five o’clock. In the event Charlie made no bones. Agreed with all our projections. Thanked us for our hard work. End of story. And there we were out on the front steps at three o’clock in the afternoon. Free.

  The weather by then was so glorious it seemed downright criminal to rush straight back into the stale dirt of the Tube. Even more so to share a taxi with Nick, whose main topic of conversation is the Arsenal. I decided to take a walk, a breath of fresh air after that cooped-up office with its smell of charred coffee and overheated copying machines. I left Nick to his own devices, and set off. When I came to the station, I turned left. I swear I might as easily have turned right, but the left looked more inviting. Sunnier, I suppose. I couldn’t possibly have recognized anything; it was two years since the other time, and anyway, Tim had done all the navigating, getting lost, and calmly admitting that he didn’t know this part of London ‘all that well’ and had only come to offer me ‘moral support’.

  So, although it was Finsbury Park, it might just as well have been Timbuktu. My thoughts were on the moment. Entirely on the moment. If I thought ahead in any way, it was to anticipate that early evening drink, or maybe a meal at Giuseppe’s with Pippa or Isabel.

  I walked on, following my nose, enjoying the freedom of an afternoon off. I crossed a little park and turned down a pleasantish road, thinking where I might go to pick up a taxi, when I saw it – the street name. It was framed neatly against a background of privet: Primrose Crescent. The name had always reminded me of Jane, esp
ecially the first time I saw her in the basement café at the Courtauld when she looked so small and pale and delicate. She’d been wearing a huge furry coat, and silver earrings. We’d taken to each other straight away.

  ‘Are you sure you’re not in love with her?’ Tim had kept asking afterwards.

  ‘Are you mad?’

  ‘You talk about her a lot.’

  ‘I always talk about women.’

  ‘Matthew, this is not the same.’

  ‘May I remind you, I am going into this with my eyes open.’

  ‘So you think. But there’ll be consequences. You’ll see.’

  Of course that was the moment to have turned back, poised on the corner of the street. I did think of it. I knew it was the sensible thing to do. But it was such an extraordinary coincidence that it seemed somehow perverse not to take a peep. And I was curious, I admit. I told myself it would do no harm just to pass by the door, just satisfy myself with the look of the place. I walked down the road. Then, when I got to the door, my feet seemed to stop of their own accord. And my hand went to open the little gate, and next thing I found myself walking up the path. It was the same time of year as before, and I recognized the creeper growing up the wall by the door – little white star-shaped flowers that I’d stared at so intensely that first time, waiting for the door to open. Not that I’d been nervous; just a little embarrassed. Tim, of course, had fussed around as if it were going to be him, not me, with the clean jam jar in the upstairs bedroom.

  I found myself knocking, the same little brass knocker shaped like a leprechaun. They were bound to be out, of course, on such a lovely day. Then I heard a footstep inside, echoing on the tiled floor. I started to panic. Jane could have changed; all sorts of things could have changed. The door opened. It was Barbara.

  ‘Hi, there,’ I said, rather too gaily. ‘It’s Matthew – Matthew Mulholland.’

  ‘Yes. I know who you are.’