A Married Man, page 23
‘It’s not miles. And anyway, I’d like to see them. Haven’t seen them for ages.’
‘I’ll pick you up, Jack, OK?’ I said between clenched teeth. I flashed him a glare and nearly went up a lorry’s backside. God, he was really annoying me now, and I wasn’t sure I liked being forced into using my parents as an excuse, either. Although I phoned regularly, I should pop in on them. I hadn’t seen them for ages. I felt suffused with guilt and irritation.
‘Where will you be?’ I snapped.
‘Hmm?’ He gazed down at my legs again, smiling.
‘I said, where will you be!’
‘Ah, yes, let me see. Where will I be?’ He narrowed his eyes reflectively out of the window. ‘Chelsea, I believe,’ he concluded with a nod. ‘Yes, Chelsea. If you insist, you can pick me up from there.’
‘Chelsea?’ I shot him a panicky look. ‘Whereabouts?’
‘Cheyne Walk. Just off, actually. Why?’
‘Oh. No reason.’ God, that was a relief. Cheyne Walk. Bit close for comfort, but at least it was right down by the river. ‘What are you doing there?’ I asked lightly.
‘Oh, this and that.’ He winked. ‘Passing the time. Concluding a little unfinished business.’
‘Ah. I see.’ I smiled knowingly. ‘You don’t change, do you, Jack? Trisha know about this unfinished business?’
He frowned in mock alarm. ‘Now why on earth would Trisha want to know?’
‘I can’t imagine.’
‘No, me neither. Now Lucy, please don’t quiz me any more. I tend to crack under pressure and anyway, I’m not used to getting up at this unearthly hour. I’m a poet, not a Eurobond dealer. I need my shut-eye.’
‘Go ahead, you get your beauty sleep. Have a power nap. You’re going to need all the power you can get if you’re going to expend all that energy later on.’
‘Well quite.’
He leaned back on the headrest with an equable smile, folded his hands across his chest, and shut his eyes. A few minutes later, the car reverberated to the sound of his faint, rhythmical breathing. I glanced across, envying him his totally relaxed disposition. Personally I needed to be horizontal in a darkened room, preferably with an eye-patch and a bottle of Benylin to hand before I could even contemplate winding down. I sighed and turned to Classic FM for comfort. As we purred up the motorway to the soothing melodies, I tried deliberately to relax, breathing all the way up from the diaphragm as I’d read one should in the Daily Mail and, oh yes, thinking about something pleasant, too. Charlie, obviously. Mmm … Charlie. I breathed deeply and turned up Ravel’s Bolero, letting it wash over me, humming along to the RUM, pu-pu-pu PUMS, which were getting really rather climactic. No wonder Torvill had let Dean drag her about the ice like that. I gripped the wheel, going with the music, and as it rose to an almighty, final crescendo, felt my vital organs convulse with a palpable frisson, as no doubt Torvill’s had too. The windscreen seemed to be steaming up. I rubbed it with my hand and wondered, nervously, if I wasn’t a bit old for all this. I drove on.
As I wove off the main A40 and down the North End Road, through the backstreets of Fulham, along the Broadway, and into the narrow roads I knew so well, I really did relax. I purred into wider avenues, gazing up at the tall, creamy buildings; pale and moody, they rose into a misty blue sky, window boxes tumbling with tasteful pink geraniums, black front doors and wrought-iron railings gleaming in the hazy eastern light. Home. I turned into the bustling King’s Road, crowded as ever, kicking with vitality, even at this hour; little cafés and wine bars spilled onto the street, and people clutching baguettes kissed each other hello, as they met on the pavement. I felt a rush of love for the place. People. A variety of people. Some in saris, some in turbans, some in high heels, some buying yams, some buying chillies – that’s what I missed. The conviviality, the chance meetings, the friendships with people one was thrown together with, the wonderful spontaneity of dear old, noisy, womb-like London. Not for me the formal, calculating way Lavinia saw her friends – a dinner party in a diary two months hence and then a twenty-mile journey to sit around a vast table with sixteen clones of herself – no. Spaghetti in the kitchen with my neighbours. A cappuccino with Jess on a hot pavement. That was my style, if I had one.
As I drew into my old road, I thought, too, how lovely it would be to see Charlie here. Back on familiar territory, in home clothes, mufti, as it were, where I felt most comfortable. As I glanced up at number 24, flicking my old, just about valid parking permit into the window, I realized, with an almighty pang, that stupidly, I hadn’t even considered how I would react to being back home. How overwhelmingly nostalgic I would feel. How jealous of whoever was in my top-floor flat right now, walking about in my kitchen, putting the kettle on in my window. To my horror, a heavy weight descended on my heart and tears welled. I swallowed hard and willed myself to buck up, blinking desperately. Suddenly, I saw a face appear at Rozanna’s ground-floor window. It was Hector. A light went on, the curtain closed, and I remembered, with a jolt, why we were here.
I glanced across at Jack, still sleeping soundly. Wiped my eyes. Oh God, we hadn’t even talked about what we were going to say, let alone how we were going to approach this. I leaned across and shook him awake.
‘Jack – wake up! Listen, we’re here, and we haven’t really got a plan at all, have we? What are we going to say?’
‘Hmmm?’ Jack opened his eyes. He yawned and stretched. ‘Oh, I’d say we pretty much play it by ear, wouldn’t you?’ He scratched his head sleepily.
‘Yes, but –’
‘Look, Lucy. All we can do is watch and listen, really. We can’t force anything out of him, and we can’t drag him home by the scruff of his neck. He’s thirty-six, for God’s sake.’
I stared up at the house. Thirty-six. Christ, yes, thirty-six! What were we doing here, anyway? Hector was practically middle-aged, not a child. It was purely because he behaved like one that one forgot. I got out of the car and followed Jack nervously up the steps. My steps. The ones I’d dragged shopping up countless times, carried pushchairs and sleeping children up. I knew them intimately. Every line, every crack, every indentation.
I no longer had a key so we had to press the buzzer. As we stood on the step, Jack smiled at me.
‘How does it feel to be back?’ he asked gently.
I shrugged nonchalantly. Pulled a face. ‘OK. A bit weird actually,’ I lied. But it didn’t. It felt safe. Like home.
‘Oh!’ Rozanna squawked through the intercom after we’d announced ourselves. ‘It’s you. Well, you’d better come in.’
We pushed the heavy black door and waded through the familiar sea of circulars which accumulated on the doormat no matter how often one picked them up, and then on down the long corridor.
Rozanna was waiting. She was standing at the entrance to her flat, arms folded in her blue silk dressing gown, leaning against the door frame. She smiled ruefully.
‘Well, I don’t know why I’m surprised,’ she drawled. ‘I suppose we should have expected this. Hey Hec,’ she threw over her shoulder. ‘It’s the Seventh Cavalry. They’ve come to rescue you at last.’
‘Idiot,’ I said, kissing her as she let us in. ‘We’re not rescuing anyone. Just came to see you, that’s all.’
‘Hees mother,’ wheedled Jack, twiddling an imaginary Mexican moustache, ‘she say she pay twenty thousand Amereecan dollars for the gringo’s release.’ He grinned at a surprised Hector, who was reading in the window seat at the far end of the room. ‘Hi there, Hec.’ He turned back to Rozanna. ‘What you say to that, beetch?’
Rozanna grinned back. ‘I say you tell her no! I say you take hees leetle finger back in a box and tell her – for twenty thousand dollars, ees all she’s getting!’
‘And that’s the only extremity you’re prepared to relinquish?’ Jack enquired, lowering his voice. ‘Nothing,’ he waggled his eyebrows, ‘nothing larger?’
She giggled. ‘No, I’m rather partial to the rest, aren’t I, Hec?’
Hector swung his legs round off the seat and stood up indignantly. ‘Bloody cheek. She sent you up here, didn’t she? Well, I’m not going back, you know.’ He blinked hard, fists clenched by his sides.
He reminded me of a child, defiantly declaring he wasn’t going back to boarding school at the end of the holidays. On closer inspection, though, I did a double take. Reclining on that window seat, I’d hardly recognized him, and now I realized why. He was dressed, not in his usual uniform of Viyella checked shirt and cords, but in a bright pink shirt and black jeans, for heaven’s sake.
‘’Course you’re not going back, Hector,’ I soothed. ‘We just wanted to talk to you, that’s all. See –’
‘How the land lies,’ interrupted Rozanna. ‘Have a nose. Take notes, report back, that kind of thing. Well go on then, get on with it.’
‘Yes, that’s it,’ agreed Jack cheerfully, removing a laundry basket from a chair before flopping down into it. ‘But please, let it be noted, that we’re “nosing”, as you put it, under duress. As Luce and I were bound to agree earlier, we still have to suck up to old Ma Fellowes, because we still live there, don’t we?’ He shot me a look. ‘Unlike you, you bastard,’ he grinned at Hector. ‘You made it over the wire, lucky sod. I take it the forged passport worked then? And the civvies I made for you from my old underpants?’
‘I’m not going back,’ repeated Hector, ignoring Jack’s banter, ‘and that’s final. You can tell her that from me. I love Rozanna, and I’m not giving her up. I’m going to marry her, and that’s the end of it, OK?’
His face was flushed with emotion, and I couldn’t help thinking it was probably the longest speech he’d ever made.
‘Good for you, old boy,’ said Jack quietly. ‘That’s all we need to know. All we need to hear, in fact. No doubt about your feelings, we’ll report back immediately.’ He plucked a bra from the laundry basket beside him and put it on his head, aping earphones.
‘Mayday, Mayday, ship’s going down,’ he reported into his clenched fist. ‘No use sending lifeboats, captain’s going down with it. Hmm? What? First mate? Hang on, I’ll ask. Rozanna?’ He turned quickly, smiling, but regarding her carefully. ‘You going down too?’
She wrapped her blue robe around her with a smile. Plucked the bra off his head.
‘Ah yes, I see,’ she said lightly, but it was the lightness of metal. ‘You think Hector is the innocent here, don’t you? And that obviously his feelings will be pure and true, because it’s the first time he’s fallen head over heels in love, poor darling. But dear old Rozanna, well. I mean, she’s knocked about a bit, hasn’t she? She’s a tart, for crying out loud, how can she possibly have feelings about anyone? All that bonking must have numbed her emotions, petrified them rigid. Paid bonking too. And all those men! Heavens.’
There was a silence as she went to stand beside Hector. ‘Except that actually, Jack, despite all those men, I’ve never met one like Hector.’ She paused. ‘Oh, I’ve met some charming ones, don’t get me wrong, and I’ve had a very nice time, been treated quite splendidly in fact, otherwise I wouldn’t have done it. And I never had to do it, either. I could always turn a guy down if I didn’t fancy him, walk out of his luxury suite at Claridge’s saying, “No thanks mate, simply not interested,” as was often the case. But you know,’ she puckered her brow, ‘interestingly, out of all the ones I did fancy, all the ones I did spend the night with – City businessmen, captains of industry, diplomats, pop stars – I never, ever wished I could take one home. Never met one I’d like to keep. But then,’ she turned fondly to Hector, ‘like I said, I never met one like this before.’ Their eyes seemed to collide. Ignite, almost. ‘A decent, kind, sincere, straightforward man, who isn’t afraid of his emotions, who tells me what he’s thinking the moment he thinks it. A good person.’ She turned back. ‘Prior to that, I’d only ever met men who couldn’t get over themselves. Men like Archie.’
I blanched. Glanced quickly at Hector. Rozanna smiled wryly.
‘Oh it’s OK, he knows. In fact, he knows everything about me now.’ She slipped her arm through his. ‘How could he possibly not? I’ve told him everything. Told him how I slipped into this game in the first place, how –’
‘Told him about Tommy?’ interposed Jack quietly.
She flinched.
‘Tommy?’ I demanded, glancing first to Jack, then back at her. ‘Tommy who?’
‘Tommy Parker,’ she said quietly, not taking her eyes off Jack. ‘My fiancé. Or ex-fiancé. Who ditched me – not quite at the altar, but near as dammit – five years ago. Tommy, who I’d known for ever, since I was a child. And who I believed I’d love for ever, too. Tommy, who I loved more than life itself. Like you loved Ned.’
‘Oh Rozanna.’ I stepped forward. ‘I had no idea. You never said …’
‘No, I didn’t,’ she said softly, shaking her head. ‘I never said. But yes, Jack, in answer to your question, Hector does know. He also knows how I picked myself up from that, grief-stricken, shattered, demoralized, and vowed I’d never love again. How I hated men, loathed them, loathed the way the so-called sexual revolution had enabled them to sleep with whoever they wanted, for as long as they wanted – with no strings attached. With impunity. I loathed the power they seemed to wield. Hated the concept that apparently, it was OK, because we women were empowered, too. Wondered if there weren’t any small, lone, female voices who didn’t want that power, preferred the way Mother Nature had intended it to be for us, preferred, after five years of sharing a man’s bed, to have a wedding ring and babies to show for it instead.’ She gave a wry smile. ‘All very warped and bitter, a psychologist would no doubt tell you, and all, doubtless, because I’d been scorned. Oh yes, I told Hec everything. I told him how, almost out of revenge, I started sleeping with men – and then never seeing them again. Never returning their calls. Tossing them aside. How I, in turn, enjoyed that power. How it snowballed. How an aristocratic friend of mine introduced me to men who, as he coyly put it, didn’t want any commitment, and how suddenly, I found myself turning from a jilted, twenty-two-year-old deb with some serious hang-ups into a highly desirable, high-class whore.’
She ran her hand through her mane of long blond hair. Sighed ruefully. ‘And for what it’s worth, I haven’t actually slept with that many, either. Like I said, I’m fussy. More than twenty, but less than thirty. Not a patch on you of course, Jack,’ she shot him a sharp look, ‘but probably on a par with your average girl about town. The difference being, of course, that unlike your average girl about town, I didn’t just take dinner off them. I took their money, too. Possibly some of their dignity as well, who knows. I certainly never felt they took any of mine.’ She paused, looked past us reflectively. ‘Yes, Hector knows all that. How could he not? It’s a fundamental truth about me. There’s no getting away from it.’
Hector put his arm protectively around her. ‘She’s had a tough time,’ he said simply. ‘But that’s all going to stop now. It’s all going to change, isn’t it, Rosie?’ He looked down at her.
I caught my breath. God, there was such a stunning naivety about him. It was as if his attitude was: oh well, that was that. An unfortunate chapter in Rozanna’s life, but now we move on. Forget it. And yet … I looked at his open, generous face, thought how tall he looked next to Rozanna, who was tiny, actually, but then I’d only ever seen her in very high heels, swathed in cashmere and silk, playing out her costume drama. How small and vulnerable she looked now, her face bare of make-up, and quite young, too, in her late twenties perhaps, and I’d always thought she was much older than me. I licked my lips nervously. It seemed so unfair to say it, but –
‘Rozanna, his family. Hector’s family. They’re obviously very upset.’
‘Of course,’ she agreed, ‘and so would I be if I were them. And that’s why I’ve told Hector to ask me in a year’s time. I’ve told him to forget it for at least as long as that. To ask me then.’
‘Oh! Good idea,’ I breathed.
‘Seems sensible,’ nodded Jack.
She smiled wryly. ‘Because you think it’ll all be over by then, don’t you? Blow out in a couple of months, probably. “Oh, she’ll want it all right, old Rozanna, you bet she will, because, my God, it’s her only lifeline, isn’t it? She’ll grasp at anything, anything that means she can have a half-normal life – a home, a family, some respectability (so long as no one finds out, nudge nudge) – but he’ll come to his senses, eventually. Oh yes, he’ll wise up. Realize that his family and most of Oxfordshire will ostracize him, see his inheritance going down the pan, and come to in double-quick time.” It won’t last a minute, that’s what you’ll all think. No.’ She held up her hand to halt my protest. ‘That’s what everyone will think. Not just you. And with good reason.’
‘You’ll all shake your heads,’ broke in Hector quietly, ‘and think, “Poor, stupid Hector. What a fool he’s made of himself. First time over the hurdles of course, so he’s bound to think he’s fallen in love. Christ, we all felt like that, but we were more like eighteen!”’ He smiled. ‘But actually, it’s not so. Contrary to popular belief, I’m neither gay nor a virgin,’ he eyed us, quite beadily for Hector, ‘and whilst I haven’t exactly been sexually promiscuous, I’ve had my fair share. I’ve just never understood what all the fuss was about. Until now. But then – I’d never experienced this. The two together. Sex and true love. Bingo.’ His eyes widened. ‘And I do know this to be true love. You see, it’s the only time in my life, I’ve ever felt …’ He paused, searched for the word. ‘Complete.’
He smiled down at Rozanna. ‘And I’m not waiting a year, whatever she thinks. I’m going to ask her every day. Every morning when I wake up with her, see her face on the pillow beside me, watch her blue eyes open. And you mark my words,’ he glanced up. ‘One fine day, she’s going to say yes.’
There was a silence. Jack and I regarded them, standing there before us. Hector seemed to have grown in stature overnight, tall and protective, whilst Rozanna looked smaller, softer. It seemed to me that they were almost standing before us as they might in church. That it might already have happened.
