Fourplay

by Jane Moore

  “Thought so. Don’t like it much meself, but I have it on in the background because my little budgie Joey gets lonely otherwise. He likes the noise the TV makes.”

  She shuffled off as Tim’s torso deflated. “Jesus,” he hissed. “Just as I thought things couldn’t get any worse, I find out a fucking budgie is my greatest fan.”

  Thankfully for Jo, the little incident took the wind out of Tim’s sails and he shut up about his ailing acting career for the rest of the journey.

  Two hours and several rounds of I-spy later, the car pulled onto the bleak seafront that had dominated so many of their childhood holidays. Tim let out a deep sigh of contentment and visibly relaxed.

  “Ah for those old days when all we worried about was where the next ice cream was coming from, eh Sis?” he smiled, rubbing the condensation from the window for a better view.

  The heart of Ty Celyn could at best be described as one road of rather bleak houses and several boarded-up shops, overlooking a cracked promenade and a gray pebbled beach. A couple of derelict boarding houses stood at one end, and a run-down amusement arcade provided shelter to several sulky teenagers puffing away at fags just inside the doorway. The Tudor-style pub that had been called The Red Lion in Jo and Tim’s youth had clearly been taken over by one of those ubiquitous chains and renamed The Legless Ladder.

  Jo edged the car into one of the countless spaces along the front and switched off the engine. Thomas and Sophie didn’t look up from their Gameboys for even one second, but Jo and Tim sat quietly for a moment, soaking up the view and all its memories of forced walks along the beach, struggling against the biting wind and mouthing silent protestations at their parents’ backs.

  Fifty yards in front of them, a family of two adults and three children sat huddled alongside their multicolored, striped wind-breaker, mutely passing around sandwiches from a plastic container. They were all wearing cardigans and tracksuit bottoms. Beleaguered was the only word to describe them.

  “Ah, the great British spirit,” said Tim. “Come hell, high water, or torrential winds they will sally forth and sit on the beach, huddled together like characters in a Wilfred Owen poem.”

  Jo laughed. “Do you remember that—ahem—summer, for want of a better word, when Dad insisted we were all going to have a marvelous time despite the fact that we could walk at a forty-five-degree angle to the pavement without falling over?”

  “Certainly do,” Tim nodded. “Do you think we endured those holidays because Dad thought they were character-forming, or simply because we couldn’t afford anything else?”

  Jo shrugged. “Bit of both, I suppose. But whatever the reason, something stuck, because here we are reliving the nightmare when we could probably have afforded a package deal on the Costa del Sol instead. Come on, let’s go and check out the caravan.”

  They drove down the remainder of the deserted promenade to the Sea View Caravan Park positioned at the far end.

  “Abandon hope all ye who enter here,” chanted Tim, as they drove under the dilapidated sign with one end flapping in the breeze.

  “Folk don’t come round here much, not since that young couple disappeared,” said Jo in her best Deep South drawl.

  It was a site of permanent caravans, some owned, some rented out. Jo’s parents’ caravan had been the former; Jo and Tim’s was the latter.

  After driving round for a few minutes, dodging small children and slow-moving pensioners, they pulled up outside plot 124, a brown and cream caravan that was indistinguishable from the hundreds of others.

  It had frosted windows, rusting sills, and those unspeakable plastic strip curtains that flapped hysterically in the wind every time you opened the door.

  “Honey, we’re home!” shouted Tim, opening the car door and bouncing out on to the grass. “And it looks just like the one we inhabited all those centuries ago.”

  “No, I think that was plot six six six,” laughed Jo, as her face was slapped by a north-westerly wind of a strength never encountered in the confines of south-west London.

  “Bloody hell, time has clearly stood still in Sea View,” said Tim as they climbed inside for a look round.

  The seat cushions were covered in the stains of ages; the curtains looked like a particularly ferocious cat had climbed up them, and patches of the carpet were mildewed.

  Jo pursed her lips. “Thank goodness we brought our own bedding or God knows what we’d catch.”

  By 9 P.M. the children were in bed, knocked out by the sea air, and the small gas fire was emanating more fumes than warmth. Jo and Tim were locked into an extremely competitive game of canasta, a regular fixture on all the Ty Celyn holidays of their youth.

  “Do you think Mum and Dad actually enjoyed these trips, or were they just a ritual they got locked in to and couldn’t get out of?” said Tim, as Jo was taking a particularly long time to take her go.

  She placed her cards face down on the table. “I’m willing to bet that it became more of a habit—sort of like their marriage, I guess. Funnily enough, I was thinking about that the other day,” she said. “There’s nothing like a marriage failure of your own to make you put everyone else’s under the microscope.”

  “The conclusion being?” said Tim, leaning back against the foam rubber sofa present in just about every rented caravan in the British Isles.

  Jo frowned. “Not sure really. Do you remember any rows? Because I don’t.”

  “Nope, can’t think of any. But when I look back it wasn’t the kind of marriage that would have lasted in this day and age. It was a bit like Bill and Hillary, if you get my drift.” He poured out two more generous glasses of white wine for them both.

  Jo laughed at this observation, then sank back onto her sofa with her glass of wine. It surprised her that Tim could be so perceptive about their parents’ marriage, at any time, let alone from the perspective of his early teens. She’d underestimated him.

  “But I don’t suppose divorce was an option in those days,” he added, gathering up all the playing cards and putting them in a neat pile in the middle of the mock-wood Formica table.

  “Why? Do you think they even thought about it?” She was shocked.

  “Doesn’t everyone at some time or another?” said Tim, casually blowing a smoke ring into the air.

  “Maybe. But you never really think your mum and dad do. When you’re parents, your children always think your marriage is infallible. Well, they used to anyway . . .” She faltered, her thoughts suddenly turning to Thomas and Sophie tucked up in the next room. The wine was beginning to take effect and she felt she might cry at any moment.

  “It’s different these days,” said Tim, as if sensing her discomfort. “Children are far more fatalistic about such matters.”

  “That’s a terrible shame though, isn’t it?” she said, tears pricking her eyes. “Everyone should be entitled to a childhood where they’re protected from that sort of thing.”

  Tim looked at her with undisguised derision. “And what good did that do us?” he said, grinding his cigarette into the ashtray. “We experienced a supposedly stable and happy childhood with two parents who stuck together through thick and thin, yet here we are sitting in a caravan in Ty Celyn on a grim August night. You nearly divorced with two wonderful children, and me . . . well, me without even so much as a steady girlfriend at the grand old age of thirty.”

  He had a point, thought Jo. We all beat ourselves up about the psychological effect our actions have on our children, but there are countless examples of those who have triumphed against all odds, and plenty of those who have fucked up despite having the Stepford childhood—a daddy who trundles off to work and a mommy who bakes cookies all day. There was no rhyme or reason to it.

  It seemed to her that, rather than reacting to a situation, children simply react to the mood or emotions that situation invokes in their parents. If you succeed in shielding them from your emotional excesses, they have every chance of emerging fairly unscathed.

  Tim’s voice bro
ke into her thoughts. “And you’re so emotionally stunted you even turned down a straightforward, honest, and—let’s face it—fucking good-looking bloke who was interested in you.”

  “Sorry?” The wine had rendered Jo incapable of interpreting who he was on about. Sean? Martin? She’d forgotten he didn’t even know about the latter.

  “Conor. Con-or!” he said, emphasizing the last syllable as if she were a total moron. He took a swig of his wine and glared at her over the rim of the glass.

  “Yes, yes, yes, I know. Maybe I fucked up!” she said, slumping back against the cushions in a mini alcoholic stupor. “But it was too soon after Jeff left and I couldn’t even think about seeing anyone else. Gimme a break!” Boy, could she feel the wine taking hold now.

  “Hello! Hell-oooooo!” slurred Tim, who was clearly three sheets to the wind as well. “You started dating Sean moments afterward.”

  “Not moments, a few weeks,” said Jo, knowing she was arguing on a technicality. “And it was different with him because I didn’t know him. It felt easier somehow.”

  She established eye contact with Tim to try and assess his reaction to this insightful remark. All he did was make the raspberry noises of someone who thought what she’d just said was total cobblers.

  “I just wanted to be made to feel attractive again, but to have got that feeling from Conor would have been so much more complicated,” she sighed, noting that a small fly had landed in her wine.

  Tim watched as she attempted to remove the struggling creature from her glass, then leaned forward and said, “Why?,” an earnest look on his face.

  “Why? Effing why?” said Jo. She rolled her eyes and lay back, staring at the ceiling. “Probably because I’ve known him forever, because he’s your best friend, because he knows our parents.” She held up a finger for each reason. “I mean, if it had gone wrong it would have fucked up everything.”

  Tim pretended to pick up an imaginary telephone. “Hello, is that Pinewood Studios? Yes, my sister would like to audition for any Bette Davis remake you might be planning.”

  “Oh, ha bloody ha.” Jo sat up again. “It’s true though. To me, Sean was just going to be a little bit of harmless fun, no strings attached,” she said, glancing at the clock and noting it was 1:30 A.M. She was about to continue when Tim butted in.

  “Sis, sis, SIS! Relationships are like tampons. They always have strings attached.”

  “I don’t agree. That’s only the case if you fall in love with someone. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what happened with Sean before I realized what a duplic . . . dupluc . . . two-faced shit he was.”

  She stopped talking and stared out of the caravan window, lost in the melancholy of recent events. Outside, the rain was lashing against the window and she watched as someone’s clothesline flew past with several items still attached to it.

  “But were you?” said Tim gently. “In love with him, I mean? I’m not so sure. It strikes me that your strength of feeling is there because the relationship never ran its course.”

  Jo shrugged, and suddenly felt very tired. “The trouble is, I’ll never know now, will I?” she said wistfully. “All I do know is that it’s over and I feel like shit.”

  They sat in silence for a few moments, the only noise coming from the spluttering gas fire and drizzle outside.

  What Tim said was true, but Jo could only base her feelings on the fact that after a year with Sean she had still felt passionate about him. Perhaps a year of dating when you have children is different from a year when you are a single woman. Everything has to be planned meticulously in advance, and you simply don’t see each other as much because time doesn’t allow. So whether her strong feelings for him ran deep enough to sustain a together forever scenario, she simply didn’t know and now never would.

  “Have you spoken to him since finding out?” said Tim, taking their empty glasses over to the small metal sink in the corner.

  “Regrettably, yes,” sighed Jo. “I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t help myself. I wanted some answers.”

  “And?”

  “And I found out he has a pretty wife and two young children living in Derbyshire.” She stood up and stretched her arms toward the low ceiling. “I also found out he would leave them if I gave him the nod.”

  Tim raised an eyebrow. “I see. And how do you feel about that?”

  Jo walked across to where he was standing and stopped just inches from his face. “God knows. Torn between hating him even more for saying it, and running off into the sunset with him in pursuit of my own happiness and bugger everyone else’s.”

  29

  black leather briefcase and pushed a distinctive red Cartier box across the table to her. “Happy birthday, Jo.”

  She immediately had two thoughts. Shit, because she hadn’t bought him anything for his birthday the month before. And fuck, because she’d suggested dinner so she could finally broach the subject she had been avoiding for months: his suggestion in Nice that they might start dating.

  “Martin, it’s absolutely beautiful!” she gasped, holding the silver tank watch against her wrist in an unashamedly admiring fashion. “But I absolutely cannot accept it.”

  Martin raised his eyebrows questioningly. “Why on earth not?”

  “Because this is the type of present you give to a loved one,” she said, placing the watch back in the box with more than a tinge of regret, and closing the lid. “We’re just friends.”

  “Ah,” he said with finality, placing the palms of his hands on the table. “I get the feeling you’re about to give me what is known in polite circles as the brush-off.”

  Jo gave him a weak smile and silently toyed with the avocado and mozzarella salad that had been placed in front of her by a rather flustered waitress. Inwardly, she was cursing Martin for giving her such an expensive present. She’d wanted to edge her way gently into the subject of letting him down lightly, not this way.

  She took a deep breath and looked straight at him. “What you said back in Nice, I have been giving it some serious thought,” she said, popping a piece of mozzarella in her mouth. “And you are a marvelous man and absolutely someone who would be fantastic to go out with, but . . .”

  “Ah yes, here comes the But,” he interrupted with a stiff smile.

  “But I just don’t think I’m ready to launch back into another relationship yet. When I think about it now, I started seeing Sean far too soon after my marriage broke up, and I really think I need to spend some time on my own and get a sense of who I am . . . if that doesn’t sound too wanky,” she added apologetically.

  A fleeting expression of mock shock crossed Martin’s face. “No, it doesn’t sound too . . . wanky, as you put it.” He was doing his usual trick of pushing his food around the plate and eating very little. “I’m quite happy for us to carry on as friends for as long as you like.”

  They ate in silence for a while and Jo marveled at how reasonable he was. Here was a remarkably mature, kind and, let’s face it, wealthy and generous man, who was willing to stand back and wait until she might be ready for a relationship. And yet here she was, jerking him around because she was still hankering after some fly-by-night television cameraman with a crappy car and a secret family up north.

  “Thanks,” she said quietly, reaching over and squeezing his hand. “And thanks for this, too.” She pushed the red box back across the table toward him.

  “You’re welcome,” he said, pushing it back again. “From one friend to another. Besides, I can’t take it back to the shop and it wouldn’t suit me.”

  For the rest of the meal, they avoided the subject of Jo’s turn-down and talked about everything from how she was progressing with her plans for his property in Nice, to Martin’s upbringing in deepest, darkest Kent.

  He was the youngest of two sons and a daughter and his parents had run their own grocery business until it had gone bust in 1975, the victim of a supermarket chain setting up nearby.

  “All their valued customers abandon
ed them,” said Martin. “But they then had the cheek to moan when they closed down because it meant getting in the car for the odd pint of milk here and there. Hypocrites!”

  He said his father had become ill with the stress of trying to find another job, and both his brother and sister left school straight after high school to get jobs and help keep the family afloat.

  “Because I was that bit younger, I stayed at school,” he added. “And by the time I left, things were much easier at home so I was able to follow my dream of going into the music business.”

  He told Jo he was so grateful to his siblings for all they’d done, he had given them $2 million each when he’d sold music.com.

  “They both gave up work immediately,” he smiled. “And it was an absolute pleasure to see it.”

  Jo was warming to this marvelous man with each passing minute. “What about your parents?”

  “Both dead, I’m afraid.” His face clouded. “My father died when I was twenty-five. He had a sudden heart attack, probably brought on by stress. My mother died of breast cancer five years ago.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, making a mental note to call her parents in the morning and be nice to them.

  “Don’t be,” he sighed. “It was all a long time ago now, but I just wish they’d lived long enough for me to be able to lavish some luxuries on them. God knows they forfeited enough for me over the years.”

  Outside in the cool October evening air, Jo stepped forward and held Martin in a lingering hug. “You’re a lovely man,” she murmured in his ear, noticing how comfortable and safe she felt in his arms.

  “But not for you,” he said with a wistful smile, as he pulled away from her.

  Jo looked at him, her head on one side. “Just friends for now, but never say never,” she smiled.

  It was 11 P.M. by the time she arrived home and put her key in the lock, admiring her expensive new watch as it glistened in the street light. Jeff was dozing on the sofa, his mouth wide open and emitting tiny, intermittent snores. A couple of years ago, it was a sight that would have depressed Jo no end, but now she could just wake it up and get rid of it.