TWENTY-EIGHT
Mrs Hennessy said, ‘Did you give it to her?’
A quick and crude riposte sprang to Peter’s mind but he resisted it. ‘Yes,’ he said, and added quickly, ‘She seemed very moved.’
‘Ah, good,’ said Mrs Hennessy, who mouthed the words Very Moved to an eager Eileen. ‘So we’re getting along famously.’
‘Urn,’ said Peter, thinking ‘moved’ was exactly right. Pamela was moved. She stood in her kitchen, moved enough to laugh her socks off, and to ask him if it was all some kind of test of her moral fibre. If she had said, ‘Red satin?’ in that uncomprehending way one more time, he might have told her what she could really do with it. As it was, he retained his dignity, suggested that she think about Dublin and Christmas, and departed.
True, she rang him up the following morning and apologized for being so insensitive, putting it down to the champagne, but by then he had lost the momentum. His knee hurt dreadfully and his head was not much better. Vaulting garden gates and launching himself upon moving taxicabs was not designed to help, and he felt extremely annoyed that it had been to no good purpose. Pamela, it seemed, was not to be wooed in a hurry. When she said, ‘Why?’ he just said, ‘Why not?’ very crisply, made some excuse and rang off. That, he thought, would teach her to be so obtuse.
‘And Dublin?’ said Mrs Hennessy. ‘Will she go?’
‘She’s thinking about it,’ said Peter.
‘Excellent,’ said Mrs Hennessy.
‘Thinking about it,’ he thought, was also exactly right. The other thing she said on the phone that morning was that she couldn’t stop thinking about it. Before becoming overwhelmed with laughter and having to apologize again. Thinking about it certainly seemed to be as much as she was prepared to do. And then she bowled the googly that women so often bowl in such circumstances and said solemnly that she was glad they could be friends after all these years.
Friends didn’t go with red satin, for which he felt both piqued and relieved.
He rubbed at his knee, removed his glasses and rubbed at his eyes. Truth was, he had been somewhat relieved at not having to stay the night after all. Late nights, heavy food and strong drink no longer encouraged the libido – if it ever had. Truth was, he would have been very happy to just get into the ruddy bed and sleep with her, red satin or not.
But you could hardly go saying that to a woman, now could you, and certainly not to an ex-wife.
He heard a whispering at the other end of the line and then Mrs Hennessy said, ‘So you did not press home your advantage?’
She was obviously enjoying all this. He could tell from her voice. It contained a hint of conspiracy which must be due to the proximity of the Eileen woman.
‘No,’ he said, ‘I did not.’ This was perfectly truthful, of course, there being no advantage to be pressed.
‘Well, that all sounds fine,’ she said. ‘Keep it up.’
He winced and rang off.
He was so irritated that he found himself, irrationally, blaming Pamela for everything, including the height of her gate. And he felt ambiguous. On the whole Dublin would probably prove to be a much easier experience if he did not have to spend all his time looking after somebody else; on the other hand it was a golden opportunity to be on neutral territory and iron out their future. They had been very happy in Dublin years ago – from what he remembered. Walking about the town, visiting Trinity, sketching, talking about how they would change the world. Not an idle student dream for him. He had. With Daniel grown up and gone, they could be like that again. He would have said so if she had given him half a chance. But her reaction to the suggestion about Christmas was as nothing to her reaction when he said he wanted them to work on the Rosen commission together.
‘Together?’ she said. ‘What way together?’
He told her. Basically he needed a helpmate. ‘And some advice about sensualizing the interior.’
‘Sensualizing?’ she said. ‘I see.’
‘Well?’ he asked.
‘I’ll let you know the answer,’ she said, ‘soon.’
‘And Christmas?’
‘The answer to both, soon.’
He felt reasonably confident. After all, as Mrs Hennessy said, and this he did agree with, it would make perfect sense. A very neat tying up of ends.
He looked around the chequer-board room and saw the white oblong lying on its black background. He limped over, picked it up, and, slipping on his glasses, checked the contents for the umpteenth time. Two seats for the noon flight from Stansted next week. He repositioned the telephone, also on a black square of paper, and sat back with a very weak vodka and tonic. He thought about ringing his son, but, then, he thought, Daniel could always ring him.
Douglas ran his hands along the perfect folds of curtaining and, despite himself, he smiled. The peacocks which had looked, as peacocks will, silly but decorative in the book of samples, looked absurd hanging here amid all this high-tech steel and glass. Sometimes you could marry the old and the new and get away with it – the Italians were always good at that – but this. . . He felt a frisson of guilt. Too late now. Anyway, Zoe would probably change it again in a year or two. Her boredom level was even lower than his.
Beyond the window barges went up river, a few little boats bobbed about, a police launch slid lazily by. The satisfyingly ordinary scene exactly framed by these absurd, posturing birds. He should not have let Zoe do it – and yet, she was really pleased. The emperor’s new clothes? Or had they all stumbled on the next style revolution? He might put that to Pamela when he spoke to her. She would laugh. Him, too. Somehow – he smoothed them again – somehow he did not think they had found the new Bauhaus.
‘Well,’ said Zoe, ‘what do you think?’
He shrugged.
‘Don’t be so modest,’ she said, and handed him his drink. ‘It was a brilliant choice. Very post-modern of you. I’ll take you up to see Lionel’s place after this. Do you know the only decent thing he’s done in the whole apartment is the curtaining? The rest of it – well, you’ll see for yourself.’
It was the game they played together all their adult lives. We are so much better than the rest, it was called, and it united them, so that they stayed invincible, strong – looking from high up and afar down on the unwashed non-cognoscenti. Whereas the stink was coming from them, he now realized. He had only just faced that. When he mentioned Zoe and her delight in her curtains to Pamela on the drive back, she said, ‘There are worse delusions in life than vulgar curtaining, Douglas.’ Very snappishly, breaking the mood. ‘Like selfishness masquerading as love.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he had said. ‘We both hurt each other.’
He touched the curtains again. He had promised himself he would not think about it. She went wild after he said that. Which he had not expected, given the way their evening had worked out. A real dam of accusation. Sounding off in a way that he had never thought her capable of. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘you hurt me. You hurt us both. Why, why, why?’ she yelled. ‘Why did you put us both through all that shit, all that pain, all that suffering time apart? How could you possibly have wasted the love, wasted the pleasure, wasted our history – and now say you are sorry? It wasn’t we, Douglas, it wasn’t we. It was you . . .’
‘I could not have coped with Daniel,’ he said. At least that was truthful.
‘Stop telling yourself you can’t cope, and get on with it. That’s what most of the rest of us do. We don’t sit around contemplating our damaged navels and hiding behind the skirts of our damaged siblings. We’re too busy trying to bring up the next generation decently. How many people do you suppose there are out there in the world just longing to be loved and to love? To have the very thing you just threw away? Love is not something you cope with. It is something you desire. Love, Douglas, is good.’
‘Yes,’ he said. It was all he could think of in the blast.
She was picking at her stocking, shredding it, completing what the walk along that track and the brambles had begun. ‘I’ve got a friend,’ she said suddenly, ‘who has struggled all her life to find what we had. She even gave up the chance of having children – which she really wanted – because she thought she had found love. And now she’s with some dickhead who can’t make up his mind between his wife and his mistress. And you – you have the warped gall to just chuck it out because you can’t cope with one child? And you don’t know how to commit?’
‘Yes,’ he said quietly, thinking he had lost after all.
‘And Douglas?’
‘Yes,’ he said, knowing what was coming.
‘I love you very much.’
And being wrong.
As they travelled up in the lift, he thought about telling Zoe everything. Just making a complete, clean sweep of it all. And also telling her that he planned – or hoped – to be away over Christmas. She was going to stay in London for the first time – for the grand opening of her flat on the day itself and with a list of preferred parties and visits for them to attend. She assumed he would be there to support her, and she him, now that Mary was gone. . .
High up they might be, he thought, watching the light indicate each floor as they ascended, but the stench was still with him. He felt in his pocket. Crumpled up was Mary’s letter. Begging to come back. Another one damaged. It had to stop somewhere, he decided. It had to stop somewhere. He told Pamela that. It was the last thing he said to her before she left, walked away from the car. She looked at him sceptically. ‘I mean it,’ he said. And he did.
He knew this hand, he thought, as Lionel showed him around. It might have been overseen by Jennifer, but this was Pamela’s way. Or rather, it was what she had taught Jennifer, he supposed. In the bedroom Zoe nudged him and pulled a face. The walls were covered in hot Italian colours, cooled by raw silk blinds and a plain pearly silk bedspread. Definitely Pam, he thought. He remembered her sounding off at him about silk being both feminine and masculine – apparently delicate but strong; light to the touch but so densely woven it could keep you warm.
He said all that to Lionel, while Zoe looked on open-mouthed. ‘I think it looks great,’ he said.
‘Do you?’ said a perplexed Zoe.
And Lionel said, ‘I wanted lemon chintz.’
Dean took the bus to Kensington High Street. It was the perfect solution – as if he had known it was there but needed to find the right key. And he had. He laughed aloud and punched the air, making the passing pedestrians stare as he walked up the hill towards Notting Hill Gate. Well, it was funny – the answer to everything in a dish of Irish stew. He was on his way for an interview to start training as a chef. For the last time, he promised himself, he had used his looks to schmooze a contact and get into one of the top places.
It was mid-morning, on a crisp, beautiful, late December day, and he felt happy. Christmas carols were mingling into one seasonal cacophony – Good King Wenceslas met the Babe in a Manger and Rudolph rang his bells. He smiled and felt no cynicism. It was the world. And he was about to step right into it up to his neck, at last. Once he was on track, all of Pamela’s doubts could leave the room and turn the light off.
When something clicks into gear in your mind, he thought, when you suddenly know what it is you have been looking for, the world seems to do the same thing. The bus on the way here stopped at every set of lights? Of course it did. The old lady needed a seat? Of course she did. The pavements were crowded and he had to step in the gutter some of the time? Of course he did. It was all the world and it was beautiful. He held on to his empty Pepsi can until he found a rubbish bin. Of course he did. The world was beautiful. He must preserve it.
Pam knew the place he was going to, said it was really good, said, slightly embarrassed, that her husband had designed it. ‘You’ll like it,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’ She would come to Dublin with him in the end, he knew she would. He stopped outside the glass-fronted restaurant, arranged his features into what he hoped was intelligent willingness, and went in.
‘Why a chef?’ said the pale, lanky man in check trousers and an odd white coat thing.
He did not look as old as Dean.
‘Are you the owner?’ asked Dean.
The pale, lanky man nodded.
‘You don’t look much different from me.’
The man said, ‘Oh?’
‘Doesn’t that answer the question?’
He laughed and asked one of the minions to bring them both a cup of coffee.
It arrived in big white mugs, with a dish of biscuits that tasted like melting heaven.
‘I want to do something creative but behind the scenes. So it is the product and not me who is judged.’
‘Crap,’ said the lanky man. ‘Go on.’
So Dean told him. About the Irish stew. When he finished the lanky man looked him up and down. And then he drummed his fingers on the table. And then he sipped his coffee and stared out of the window. Dean saw the world outside as thin and insubstantial again, dirty and cold, the people grim-faced. He really wanted this. And for once his eyelashes were not going to be any help.
The pale lanky man stood up. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘Speak to Genevieve. We’ll give you a chance.’
‘Jesus, thanks,’ said Dean, standing up.
He tried to get hold of Pamela to tell her, but she was unavailable. Busy, he guessed.