The Best of Friends

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘In that case,’ Sophy said, sounding cold and cross, ‘if I’m not allowed to see anyone, I’ll go to the cinema. With George.’

  ‘Darling, I’m not trying to stop you, I’m only thinking of them, I’m just—’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Sophy said in the same voice, ‘I’ll go to the cinema. And I’ll probably sleep here.’ She put the telephone down then.

  ‘Is that Sophy?’ Vi had said.

  ‘Yes—’

  ‘Is she coming? Is she coming round?’

  Gina fought the desire to defend herself by saying Sophy was going to the cinema, won and said not, actually, until the morning.

  ‘What’d you tell her?’ Vi said, sharp with suspicion.

  Gina turned her face up to the sky. It was deep, gauzy blue and scattered with stars. She never knew what they were, had never learned despite Fergus’s fascination with the constellations. She felt absolutely drained and yet restless, and the thought of going back to High Place and letting herself into its quiet, clean, empty spaces was tremendously unappealing.

  ‘Drop in when you’re passing,’ Laurence had said. ‘Any time.’

  She peered at her wristwatch, its dial glowing in the faint light like a tiny echoing moon. Half-past eleven. Was that any time? And what about Hilary, severe with fatigue at the end of another long day . . . Perhaps she would just walk past The Bee House, and look in and see if there were still any signs of life, lights on, people in the bar spinning out their last drinks while Don polished glasses and beer taps with meaningful finality. If there was a glimmer of life, she would venture in; if there wasn’t, she would go home and finish making the toast she had embarked upon nine hours before.

  From the street, only one light shone on the ground floor, the spotlight above the bar which illuminated a painting a guest had once done, a not very good water-colour of The Bee House garden showing the long wall – all out of perspective – with the bee boles set in it and darkly shadowed. Gina peered in. The tables were cleared, the bar grilles were down and a black plastic bag of rubbish sagged by the door down to the kitchen, waiting to be taken away in the morning. There was a line of light under the door to the kitchen. Gina went round into the yard at the side of the building and saw that some of the kitchen lights were on, throwing great oblongs of pale colour on to the cobbles the Victorians had laid, square and even and blue-grey. She stood outside one of the oblongs of light and looked in.

  Laurence and Hilary were in there, sitting either side of the big central table with its battery of knives sunk in slots down the middle. Laurence had a glass of wine in front of him and Hilary a mug of something. Her hands were folded round it and her spectacles were pushed up on top of her head, ruffling her short hair like thick dark feathers. Laurence was still in his chef’s apron – he never wore full whites – over his usual clothes. All around them the kitchen lay tidy and quiet, a tray of eggs ready for the morning at Hilary’s elbow.

  Gina stepped forward to the kitchen door and knocked. There was a sudden little silence and then the sound of a chair being pushed back and Laurence’s footsteps.

  ‘Who is it?’

  ‘Me,’ Gina said. ‘Gina.’

  ‘Good God,’ Laurence said, throwing the door open. ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, blinking at the light. ‘It’s Mum, really. I’m sorry to come so late but it’s been a bit of a day and I felt I couldn’t go home—’

  Hilary got up, settling her red spectacles on her nose. She came forward and gave Gina a quick kiss on the cheek.

  ‘What’s up?’

  ‘It’s Dan. Poor old Dan. Something to do with his heart. He fainted and Mum found him, pretty groggy and not able to remember anything much. He’s in hospital and Mum’s in as bad a state about that as she is about him being ill. It’s taken me all evening to get her to bed.’

  Hilary held the kettle up.

  ‘Tea?’

  ‘Or wine,’ Laurence said. ‘The end of a very nice bottle of South African Merlot. Poor old Dan. Poor Vi, too.’

  ‘It’s all right,’ Gina said, ‘I’m not staying. I just wanted to see someone, for a moment.’

  Laurence put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down into the chair Hilary had occupied.

  ‘Don’t talk daft. Of course you’re staying, at least long enough to drink a glass of something. We were only having a parental anxiety about George.’

  ‘Let’s be honest,’ Hilary said, putting the kettle down. ‘I was. You were just wombling about as usual saying don’t bully him, let him decide. But he doesn’t know what to decide, can’t you see? He needs our help, he needs suggestions.’ She glanced at Gina. ‘What did they say was the matter?’

  Gina said, ‘Something to do with the aortic valve.’

  ‘But he didn’t have angina, did he?’

  ‘I don’t think so—’

  ‘Odd,’ Hilary said, and then, in an instructive tone, ‘It’s serious, you know.’

  Laurence slid a glass of red wine towards Gina.

  ‘Don’t,’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying to persuade Mum of the opposite all evening.’

  ‘Even only twenty-five years ago,’ Hilary said, ‘anyone with aortic disease might be advised not to marry.’

  ‘Hil,’ Laurence said gently, admonishingly.

  She gave him a quick look.

  ‘They love each other,’ Gina said suddenly. ‘They really do.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Mum yelled at everyone in the hospital. Then at me. She’s terrified.’

  ‘Of course.’

  Hilary came forward and leaned on her hands on the table. She yawned.

  ‘So’s poor old George in his way. Terrified of not knowing what he wants, of not being anything, becoming anything. I’m really sorry about Dan. And Vi, of course.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m awfully sorry too,’ Hilary went on, ‘but I’m dropping. Quite apart from George, we have some pure horrors in number two, all smarm on the surface, but relentlessly complaining. They’re here for a week and nothing’s ever right, with all the grizzles wrapped up in “I do hope it’s not too much trouble to change rooms, or pillow, or bath-towel size or bedside-lamp wattage or morning-tea variety”. I’d really rather they were rude.’ She leaned sideways and put an arm briefly round Gina’s shoulders. ‘I have to go to bed. You stay and talk to Laurence. And try not to worry. Everything will look better in the morning.’

  ‘I’m not staying long,’ Gina said. ‘Promise. I just needed an interval between Mum and High Place.’

  Hilary blew them both an approximate kiss, and went out of the kitchen, letting the weighted door swing to behind her. Laurence untied his apron and threw it over a nearby chair. Then he sat down opposite Gina, as he had been sitting opposite Hilary.

  ‘It’s pitiful. It’s one of the best relationships I know. They just love each other for what they are, not for what they need or want.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Are you jealous?’

  Gina turned her glass by its stem.

  ‘Yes. I suppose I am, in a way. I know Mum deserves it after the life she’s had, but she’s so impossible in so many ways and Dan isn’t put off by anything. He just cried when he saw her in the hospital.’

  Laurence spread his hands out on the table and looked at them critically, as if they were someone else’s hands altogether, and he had been asked to assess them.

  ‘They’ve got their priorities right.’ He glanced away from his hands at Gina. ‘How’re you doing?’

  She smiled.

  ‘Quite well. Tiny bit better most of the time, except for Sophy where I haven’t even started, being paralysed with terror about getting it wrong and then alienating or damaging her.’

  ‘Rather as I feel about George. It’s so hard being young now. You’d think having a thousand choices made you free as a bird but in practice it seems to be only alarming and confusing.’

  Gina said, ‘He’s so sweet.’
r />   ‘George?’

  ‘Yes. George.’

  Laurence smiled with a deep pleasure.

  ‘Yes, he is, isn’t he? Sweet. Probably that’s what makes him vulnerable. Adam’s much less sweet, and although he makes us furious we don’t agonize over him the same way.’

  ‘We were like them not very long ago. Don’t you remember? Resenting our parents, hating home, determined to do everything in a new, fresh, imaginative way and sure that we could. My counsellor always wants me to look forward but I think that sometimes you have to look back just to remind yourself where the story began, how things came to be.’

  ‘The story—’

  ‘Yes.’

  She picked her wine glass up and took a swallow. Laurence watched her.

  ‘We’ve got a story. Haven’t we?’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I mean,’ Gina said, ‘that when I’m desperate, when I don’t know where to turn, I come to you. Don’t I? Because we go back a long way, because I trust you. I suppose it’s an instinct to come to you.’

  She looked across at him and she smiled.

  He said, ‘You’ve had such a rough time—’

  ‘I think maybe you’re the only person—’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You’re so kind, Laurence,’ Gina said. ‘Such a kind man. You always have been. Kindness is such a lovely quality in a man.’

  He stood up and looked down at her. She looked back at him.

  ‘Could I ask you something?’

  ‘Anything—’

  ‘Would you – would you hold me? Just for a moment?’

  He came round the table, holding his hands out to her. She stood up, ignoring his hands, and put her hands on his shoulders. He looked down at her, at her dark head and brows and lashes, at her arms with the thin silver bracelets, and considered her. He had known her all those years, how she looked, how she thought and felt and behaved, a whole catalogue of facts that you do know, almost by osmosis, about another person over long years, facts that he, Laurence, had known fondly but unexcitedly, for ever. And as he looked down at her, he felt all those facts that he knew, and all those things he could observe, cohere in his heart most powerfully and mingle with his relief at her appreciation of him and the sheer pleasure of feeling her there in his arms until he could hardly breathe.

  ‘Gina,’ he said, and his voice was hoarse. ‘Oh Gina.’

  He pulled her to him and held her there, his face against her hair, his eyes closed.

  ‘Oh Gina,’ he said again, and slid his face down to hers to kiss her on the mouth.

  Chapter Nine

  ‘JUST GO,’ ADAM said. ‘Just bloody go. We’ll cover for you.’

  Sophy looked at them all.

  ‘I ought – to tell someone. Oughtn’t I?’

  ‘No,’ George said.

  Gus, lying across the end of the sagging brass bed, said, ‘There’ll only be hassle.’

  ‘You’ve got every right,’ Adam said, ‘haven’t you? I mean, he’s your dad.’

  Sophy had pulled out the hem of her waitress’s shirt and was fiddling with it.

  ‘Mum’s worried about Gran and Dan you see, already, and I—’

  ‘She won’t know,’ George said. ‘She’ll think you’re here. You’re here heaps anyway.’

  Adam yawned.

  ‘Just do it. Why’s it such a big deal anyway?’

  ‘Everything’s a big deal in my family,’ Sophy said automatically. ‘Always has been. You know that. We have to talk about how we feel about things, even about how the washing machine’s loaded—’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ Adam said. ‘Not now your dad’s gone.’

  There was a small silence and then Sophy said savagely, ‘Shut up about my dad.’

  ‘Sorry. I only meant—’

  ‘You don’t know him,’ Sophy said. ‘No-one does.’

  Gus sat up and looked at her. She’d been in a pretty steadily bad mood for days, all twitchy and silent and difficult the way girls seemed to get. They made it violently plain that something was badly the matter and then wouldn’t talk about it. Sophy looked really tired. When she looked like that Gus wanted to buy her flowers or make her one of his Egg Tango Specials, in a bun, with ketchup. He said, awkwardly, because his two brothers were there, ‘I think you should just do what you want.’

  Sophy nodded. She tied the two front corners of her shirt hem in a knot, and pulled them tightly in to her waist.

  ‘Go on,’ Adam said, ‘go for it. Our mum’ll think you’re there and your mum’ll think you’re here and we’ll let them both go on thinking it.’

  Sophy flashed a look at George.

  ‘Will – will you come with me?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘But I can’t—’

  ‘You can,’ he said. ‘You must. This is you and your dad.’

  ‘What’ll I do if he’s got a girlfriend?’

  There was a pause. They all considered the idea of Fergus Bedford and a girlfriend, the very word suggesting the kind of airbrushed lovelies who adorned Gus’s bedroom walls, advertisements torn from magazines.

  ‘Jeez—’

  ‘Don’t think about it, he probably hasn’t—’

  ‘I’d die,’ Sophy said. ‘I’d just go mad.’

  Gus slid off the bed, rucking the patchwork spread into deep furrows.

  ‘It’s another reason for going, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘I mean, just to make sure he hasn’t?’

  Adam picked up a pillow off the bed and hurled it at him.

  ‘You fuckwit,’ he said. ‘You utter fuckwit.’

  Whittingbourne Station was virtually deserted except for a hunched girl in black biting her nails and a neat elderly woman with a labelled suitcase. A dead, mid-afternoon quiet hung over it all and nothing stirred except a sparrow or two, down on the line, busily bobbing and pecking between the rails.

  Sophy chose a bench at the opposite end of the platform from the girl and the woman, under a poster for family-excursion railway fares and another for a Tina Turner concert. She was wearing jeans and a white shirt under an indigo linen jacket Fergus had bought her, saying that he did rather crave, sometimes, to see her in something tailored. She’d hardly worn it and the linen still felt smooth and new, crinkling into sharp creases, like paper. It smelled lovely, better than cotton, almost of outdoors, of the fields where the flax had once grown, blue under a blue sky.

  On her way to the station, she’d been to see Dan. She wanted to see him anyway, but he was also part of her alibi that she was still in Whittingbourne this afternoon and evening, and not in London, having supper with Fergus. Fergus had been astounded when she rang, then delighted, almost rapturous. He wanted her to come at once, right now, stay the weekend. No, she said, just supper and the night, this time.

  ‘Does Mum know?’

  Sophy paused.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Should you not tell her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I would rather you did—’

  ‘No,’ Sophy said. ‘Not this time. I don’t want to be asked things afterwards. I don’t want her – thinking about it.’

  Dan had been very sleepy. They’d sedated him, because he had become rather wild and excited and full of determination to get out of bed. Vi’s sewing bag – red silk, embroidered with dragons, on a wooden handle – hung on the handle of his bedside locker drawer and there were unmistakable flowers from her, orange and russet, in a moulded glass vase. She was there all day, Dan said drowsily, except for little breaks, stitching and talking and reading to him out of the newspaper.

  ‘She’s no reader,’ he said lovingly. ‘Hopeless, really. Breaks off halfway through every sentence to comment on what she’s reading. Drives me potty.’

  He looked very small to Sophy, and fragile, lying there so neatly under the unwrinkled bedcover. She couldn’t help noticing how well kept he was, nails and hair trimmed, chin smooth, pyjamas clean and buttoned up neatly.
>
  ‘Did they say when you can come home?’

  He rolled his head a little on the pillow.

  ‘No, dear.’

  She wanted to ask him if he hated it in there, in this room full of beds and old men and the helpless, off-putting noises of illness, but felt she couldn’t because even if he did, he had no option but to stay.

  ‘You all right, dear?’

  She nodded. It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him where she was going.

  ‘Yes, I’m fine. Hilary’s given me a job, waitressing mostly but a bit of cleaning bedrooms and washing up too. I’ve made forty-two pounds so far.’

  ‘Good girl,’ he said. One hand roved about in search of Sophy’s. She took it and it was cold and small. ‘Good girl. That’s the ticket.’

  ‘That your grandad?’ a nurse said to her, on the way out.

  ‘Sort of—’

  ‘Lovely old gentleman,’ the nurse said. ‘Lovely manners.’

  ‘Will—’ Sophy said, and then stopped.

  The nurse began to flick through cards on the ward’s reception desk.

  ‘He’s doing very nicely,’ she said. ‘Slept like a baby last night.’

  Vi hadn’t. Vi had woken Gina and Sophy at two in the morning demanding they all three go to the hospital right now and get some sense out of someone. Gina had gone round to Orchard Close and Sophy had lain awake on the top floor waiting for the sound of her car returning. She must have gone to sleep in the end because she never heard it and in the morning Gina’s bedroom door was shut and there was a note on the kitchen table: ‘Darling, don’t wake me. Didn’t get in till five. See you later?’ ‘No,’ Sophy had written at the bottom. ‘You won’t. I’m working tonight. I’ll probably stay there.’ And then, in contrition at the end, ‘I hope you slept OK.’

  The train was only half full. Sophy chose a seat opposite a black woman who was asleep and a boy with headphones on, reading a computer magazine. She had her soft straw basket on her lap in which her sleeping T-shirt and toothbrush lay concealed under her Walkman, a clutter of tapes, her purple canvas purse and a copy of Sense and Sensibility which Fergus had given her and which she had never read. She didn’t much feel like reading it now.

  ‘Jane Austen,’ Fergus had said, giving her the book still in its smooth paper bag from the Whittingbourne Bookshop, ‘is remarkably good at teenagers. As you will see.’