From Something Old

by Alexander, Nick

  ‘No worries,’ Amy said, standing. ‘I should probably go.’

  ‘Please don’t rush off,’ I said. Despite her madcap idea, there was something I rather liked about her. Plus, it was so rare to have someone to talk to in the house. ‘At least drink your tea,’ I added.

  Amy glanced at the mug of tea, still untouched. ‘Um, this is gonna sound even crazier,’ she said. ‘But I don’t actually drink tea.’

  ‘You don’t?’

  ‘No. I gave up coffee and alcohol too, but I have to admit to caving in on the alcohol front.’

  I laughed. ‘Would you rather have a glass of wine or something?’

  ‘Oh no,’ Amy said. ‘No, I didn’t mean that. It’s just that I don’t drink tea.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say, though?’ I asked her. ‘I could have made you something else.’

  Amy shrugged. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I was trying not to be rude, I guess.’

  If there was one feeling I knew well, it was that of not saying what you want in order to avoid conflict. Strangely, it made me like her even more. ‘Please have something else,’ I said. ‘I have juice. Or beer. Or wine. Or—’

  ‘No. Thank you. Really,’ Amy interrupted. ‘I just want to go home and lick my wounds, I think.’

  I followed her to the base of the stairs, where she shouted Ben’s name in an impressively loud voice. He appeared, running down the stairs, seconds later. ‘Are we going already?’ he asked breathlessly.

  ‘I’m afraid so,’ Amy said as Lucy appeared on the landing above. ‘But maybe you two can play together again some other time.’

  ‘And Spain?’ Ben asked.

  ‘Sorry,’ Amy said, ruffling his hair, and then pushing him towards the front door. ‘But your dad was right. It’s not going to work.’

  ‘But why?’ Ben asked.

  ‘I’ll explain later,’ Amy said.

  Just as I reached out for the latch, a shadow appeared on the other side of the window. I opened the door to find Anthony on the doorstep, key in hand.

  ‘Oh, hello!’ he said, raising his eyebrows in surprise. ‘What are you doing here?’

  ‘Ah, so you’re Lucy’s dad,’ Amy said.

  ‘And I’m guessing you’re Ben’s mum?’ Ant replied.

  ‘You two know each other?’ I asked hesitantly.

  ‘Yeah,’ Ant said slowly, without dragging his eyes from Amy’s face. ‘Yeah, um, Joe, Amy’s partner? Husband?’

  ‘Husband,’ Amy replied.

  ‘He did the kitchens out at Powell’s flats. Did a good job, too.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said, glancing between the two of them. ‘Right.’

  ‘Um, I should go,’ Amy said, sounding a bit flustered as she glanced over Ant’s shoulder towards her car.

  ‘Sure, yeah,’ Ant said, stepping aside so that they could shuffle around each other on the doorstep. ‘Bye then. And, um, give my regards to Joe.’

  ‘Yes, I’ll do that,’ Amy said.

  ‘Bye, Ben,’ Lucy, now glued to my leg, called out.

  Once Ant had closed the front door and walked through to the kitchen, I went into the lounge. Through the bay window, I watched as the little sports car turned around and then pulled away down the drive. And I wondered what had just happened. Because something had. Of that much I was sure.

  I watched the car vanish and then joined Ant in the kitchen. He had hung his jacket on the back of a chair and was crouching down to listen to Lucy’s chatter.

  ‘Where’s Sarah?’ I asked. ‘Lucy, where’s Sarah?’

  Lucy shrugged. The shrugging was a new thing and she did it awkwardly, as if she hadn’t quite mastered the gesture yet.

  ‘Then go and find her, please. Make sure she’s OK.’

  She huffed and then ran from the kitchen, shrieking ‘Sarah, Saraaah! Are you OK?’ as she climbed the stairs.

  Ant moved to the sink, where he stared at the soup bowl and mugs. ‘Dishwasher broken?’ he asked.

  Because I knew that this wasn’t an actual question, merely a reproach about the dirty items sitting in the sink, I ignored it and began emptying the dishwasher. As I did so, I considered the fact that Ant hadn’t initiated a conversation about Amy being here and how strange that seemed.

  ‘So how do you know Amy?’ I asked casually.

  Ant had sat down at the table and was studying a wodge of paperwork. ‘Um?’ he said. ‘Oh, I told you. Her husband did the kitchens out at Powell’s.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, pausing with three clean mugs in my hands. ‘That explains how you know him. But how do you know her?’

  ‘I went to their place once or twice,’ Ant said, without looking up from his documents. ‘To sign contracts and pay him and what-have-you.’

  ‘He works from home then, does he?’

  ‘No, they’ve got a workshop out in Hoath. But his office is at home, so . . .’

  ‘And Amy was there, when you visited?’

  Ant sighed and rolled his head around, stretching his neck. ‘Apparently so, seeing as I’m telling you that’s how I know her.’

  ‘Where do they live?’ I asked.

  ‘What is this?’ he asked. ‘University Challenge? A thousand questions about Amy?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, keeping my intonation as unchallenging as possible. ‘No, I just wondered where they live. I gather it’s not that far away, but I’ve never seen her around.’

  ‘It’s the house near the stables,’ Ant said. ‘The one just after the bend. They’ve got a massive Buddha in the window.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ I said. ‘The house with the big truck outside?’

  ‘That’s the one,’ Ant said.

  ‘Are they Buddhists, then?’

  ‘Not that I know of. But I don’t actually ask people their religion when I sign contracts with them.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘No, of course. Is it nice?’

  ‘Is what nice?’

  ‘Their house.’

  Ant shrugged. ‘It’s . . . you know . . . normal.’

  ‘Normal,’ I said.

  ‘Like here, I suppose,’ he said. ‘It’s got a similar floor plan, but they’ve got a double garage out back. They’ve got a fuck-off pool in the garden, too.’

  ‘You mean a big one?’

  ‘Yeah, one of those lap pools that everyone’s into now.’

  ‘Gosh, a pool!’ I said, as I straightened with a fresh batch of plates. ‘That’s nice. Maybe we should befriend them.’

  ‘Since when did you want a pool?’ Ant asked.

  ‘I don’t want a pool,’ I said. ‘But it would be nice for the girls, I mean, in summer, when it’s hot. If they could go and splash in Ben’s pool, that would be great. Lucy seems to be friends with him anyway.’

  ‘Just . . .’ Ant said, waving a hand as if to distance a fly. ‘Give it a break, OK?’

  Give what a break? I thought. But I didn’t say a word. It wasn’t worth trying to go any further when he was in that sort of mood.

  I finished emptying the dishwasher and then loaded it with the offending soup bowl and mugs before swishing some bleach around the sink. ‘She . . .’ I started, but then stopped myself. I’d forgotten momentarily that I was giving it a break.

  ‘She what?’ Ant asked, sounding irritated.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said.

  ‘No, go on,’ he insisted. He put down his papers and folded his arms, then shifted in his chair to face me, giving me his full attention. ‘I’m assuming this is about Amy again.’

  ‘Really, Ant,’ I said. ‘It’s nothing. I was just making conversation.’

  ‘Why was she here, anyway?’ he asked. ‘Are you two best mates now or something?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said. ‘But that’s what I was going to say. What I was about to tell you . . . Why she came.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She came to . . . You remember Lucy going on about Spain the other night?’

  ‘Spain?’ Ant said. Then, ‘Oh, Spain. Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Well,
she came to invite us, believe it or not. Officially, like.’

  ‘Amy came to invite us to Spain?’

  ‘Yes, they’ve rented some huge villa in Spain apparently, and she feels like it’s a waste to have all those rooms empty or something. Their parents were supposed to go with them, I think, but they can’t make it. So . . .’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So that’s it. She came to invite us to join them. On their holiday.’

  ‘To Spain!’ Ant said, laughing and shaking his head in disbelief.

  ‘I know!’ I agreed. ‘It’s a bit mad, really. I mean, we don’t even know them.’

  ‘It’s totally mad,’ Ant said.

  ‘But well meant, I think.’

  ‘Huh!’ Ant said. ‘I wonder if Joe knows about that. Because that doesn’t sound like him.’

  ‘Oh, don’t tell him, maybe?’ I suggested. ‘Not if it’s going to get her into trouble.’

  Anthony laughed again, then, gathering his papers, he stood. ‘Oh, I’ll tell him all right,’ he said. ‘I need to read these, so I’m going upstairs for half an hour,’ he added. ‘Call me when tea’s ready, yeah?’

  No further mention was made of Amy, or Joe, or even Spain for the rest of the week.

  But on Friday morning Ant left for work as normal, closing the front door behind him, only to return and surprise me in the kitchen.

  ‘Did you forget something?’ I asked, looking up from the kettle, which I was filling.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Well, yeah, actually. Have we got a decent bottle of wine in the house?’

  ‘A decent bottle of wine?’ I repeated. ‘Um, yes. Almost definitely.’

  ‘Good,’ he said. ‘Because we’re eating out tonight. At Joe’s place. I forgot to tell you last night.’

  ‘We’re eating out?’ I said, struggling to understand exactly what he meant.

  ‘Yes,’ Ant said slowly, as if I was being a bit thick. ‘At . . . Joe’s . . . place.’

  ‘Is this Joe-and-Amy Joe?’

  ‘Do we know any other Joes?’

  ‘Um, no,’ I said. It was just that it seemed so unlikely we’d be eating with them that I’d been wondering if Joe’s Place wasn’t perhaps the name of a restaurant. Not that the bottle of wine would have made much sense if that were the case, but . . . ‘Really?’ I said. ‘We’re going to dinner at their house?’

  ‘Apparently so,’ Ant said. Then in a softer tone, he added, ‘That’s OK, isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose,’ I said. ‘Do we need a babysitter? Because it’s a bit—’

  ‘He said to bring the girls,’ Ant said. ‘He said he’s going to order in pizza or something. He asked if vegan pizza was OK. I didn’t even know they did vegan pizza.’

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ I said vaguely, because I was already worrying about what to wear. ‘Yes, Kerry gets vegan pizza sometimes. She’s quite chic, isn’t she? Amy, I mean. So are we dressing up?’

  Ant glanced down at himself. ‘I’ll be going straight from work, so . . .’ He was wearing a dark blue suit and a deep-blue open-necked shirt. Clothes are so easy for men, aren’t they?

  ‘Just wear that blue dress,’ Ant said. ‘You look great in that.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I said, grasping at this rare compliment as a lifeline in what was, after all, an unusual and destabilising situation. ‘OK, the blue one. Yes, that’ll be fine, won’t it? And what time?’

  ‘He said eight,’ Ant said.

  ‘Eight!’ I exclaimed. ‘Gosh, that’s late. Especially for Sarah.’

  ‘Some of us have to work,’ Ant said. ‘But they’ll be fine. They’ll be excited. And you can give them a snack before you go, can’t you?’

  ‘Can you come home first?’ I asked. I was imagining how excruciating it would be if I got there before Ant and had to wait for him to arrive. Alternatively, I was imagining sitting at home trying to work out if it was late enough to be sure he was already there. ‘So we can go together,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to go alone.’

  ‘It’s just down the road,’ Ant said. ‘It’s, like, a hundred yards.’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘So come home first, and we can walk down together, OK?’

  ‘You!’ Ant said. Then, ‘Sure, whatever. I’ll come home first.’

  It will give you some idea just how isolated and isolating my life had become if I tell you that I was so stressed and so utterly excited about the invitation that I couldn’t think of anything else all day.

  Other than the restaurants we visited during our holiday trips, Ant and I hardly ever ate out, and as for dinner at someone’s house, that’s simple: it hadn’t happened since I’d met him. And I mean, really, not once.

  I spent most of the day preening myself. I waxed my legs and plucked my eyebrows. I dyed my roots, ran an iron over my blue dress and polished my blue ankle boots. I tried on the outfit I’d envisaged – the blue dress with a grey cardigan and the boots – and then tried on a few other permutations as well. But in the end the best result, or the least ugly one, was definitely the blue dress Ant had suggested.

  Finally, I changed back into my day-to-day clothes and walked down to meet the girls.

  I passed Amy’s house on the way, and did my best to look inside. But the sunlit leaves of a tree were reflected in the window, and other than the vague outline of the Buddha, I couldn’t see a thing.

  As I walked home with the girls, Ant phoned me to tell me the dinner was now at seven. Joe, apparently, thought he could get off work earlier and Amy, like myself, thought that eight was too late.

  Ant arrived home just after six and I couldn’t help but wonder if he too was feeling nervous. He showered, shaved, and even trimmed his nose hair, I noticed, before putting on a clean shirt and a more relaxed, tan-coloured suit.

  I dressed the girls prettily in Victorian-style velvet dresses and, looking like the Waltons on their way to Sunday Mass, we tripped off down the lane.

  It was Amy who opened the front door, with Ben, once again, clinging to her legs. She was wearing a black jumpsuit with a subtle white polka-dot design and a black cashmere wrap-around cardigan. The result looked casual but somehow expensive.

  ‘Joe’s not in yet,’ she said. ‘But he should be here any minute.’ And exactly at the moment she said this, his truck pulled up behind us.

  Joe climbed out and I realised that I’d never seen him before. Then again, perhaps I had, and I hadn’t noticed him. In his blue jeans and mustard builders’ boots, he was somehow a very everyday-looking sort of man. ‘Hi,’ he said, slamming the door to the pickup and crossing the gravel to join us. ‘Am I late?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said.

  ‘Only just,’ Amy corrected, checking her watch. ‘Two minutes late, to be precise.’

  ‘She’s got an atomic watch, that one,’ he joked, holding out his hand. ‘I’m Joe.’

  I introduced myself and then we followed Amy into the house.

  ‘Gosh!’ I said, looking around. I was just blown away by the decor. In fact, I was so surprised that Ant had described it as ‘normal’ that I glanced at him to see if it had changed since he’d last been here. But he didn’t look surprised, so I could only assume that he was impervious to how beautiful it was. Everything was white, that was the thing. I don’t think I have ever seen so much white and light and sparkle in a house.

  The floors were bleached wooden boards with natural-colour vintage rugs strewn around. The white walls were dotted with plank-like shelves holding books and pastel-tinted pots with plants. Amy led us through to the lounge, and it was more of the same, but with stripped antique bits of unmatched furniture, which gave the whole thing a kind of natural hippy-chic look that I hadn’t really come across before. It was perhaps how I’d imagine Gwyneth Paltrow’s place might look, only refreshingly jumbled and relaxed.

  As the girls headed off upstairs with Ben, I started gliding around the room inspecting various objects as they caught my eye. There was a weathered builder’s trestle with a sheepskin rug thrown across it, on
which a cat was sleeping.

  I walked over to stroke the cat and then crouched down to look more closely. ‘He looks just like Dandy. Isn’t this Dandy?’ I asked, addressing Ant.

  ‘God, I hope not,’ Ant said.

  Amy laughed. ‘No, that’s Riley,’ she said. ‘Who’s Dandy?’

  ‘Dandy was our cat,’ Ant explained. ‘We lost him when we moved here. He did look a bit like yours, actually.’

  ‘No, this is definitely our cat,’ Amy said, crossing to tickle his chin. ‘You’re Riley, aren’t you?’ she said, and the cat did seem to react to his name, or at least to Amy, more than to me calling him Dandy.

  I moved to look the cat in the eye. ‘He does look a lot like Dandy. The likeness is pretty striking.’

  ‘Maybe he’s Dandy’s brother,’ Ant said. ‘Even if it was Dandy, we don’t want him back. Living in a cloud of cat hair was not my thing.’

  ‘Ant!’ I protested.

  ‘Well, it’s true,’ he said. ‘Used to drive me crazy.’

  ‘Oh, I know what you mean,’ Amy said. ‘The fur is annoying, but we love him, don’t we? And these tabbies do all look the same. But we’ve had Riley since he was a kitten, haven’t we, Joe?’

  ‘Um,’ Joe said, nodding, I thought, unconvincingly.

  I stroked Riley one more time and, making an effort to tell myself that he looked happy, whoever’s cat he was, I crossed to the bay window.

  There was a huge bowl made of gobstopper marbles invisibly stuck together and an enormous teardrop planter suspended from the ceiling. Both were glinting in the sunlight next to the hefty jade Buddha. ‘I love this,’ I said, caressing the dish. ‘And the Buddha’s gorgeous.’

  ‘A gift from Joe’s dad,’ Amy said. ‘It’s from Thailand, apparently. It’s supposed to bring good luck.’

  Joe made his excuses then and slipped upstairs to change while Amy led the way through to the kitchen, which was even prettier. It had white tongue-and-groove walls, and cupboards with grey slatted doors that looked like French shutters; a vast white marble-topped island in the middle, and more unvarnished plank shelves on the walls. The whole place seemed to shimmer, which was something to do with the halogen lighting and all the glassware Amy had dotted around the place. We’d had our own kitchen replaced when we moved in and I couldn’t help but think that the ultra-safe gloss grey units we’d chosen said more about our lack of imagination than words ever could. I looked down at my blue dress, mentally comparing it with Amy’s outfit, and decided it demonstrated a similar failure of imagination.