Life Begins Page 15

  He had her whole hand now and was leading her through an archway connecting the kitchen-diner to the sitting room. The journey seemed to take a long time. Charlotte leant back a little, enjoying the feeling of being pulled, persuaded, of abdicating control. They passed a print of a leopard, crouching amid tall grass, the sides of its mouth curled to reveal the white scythes of its teeth; then a photo of a young woman in shorts and a loose T-shirt, long bleached hair blowing across her eyes, dimpled knees, her feet buried in messy mounds of sand. Up ahead, beyond Tim’s arm – still stretched in the act of pulling her – was a sofa, dark red, velveteen. It felt soft to lie on, almost too soft, sinking under her spine like a hammock even before he was on top of her.

  He moves inside me and suddenly stops, remaining poised on his raised arms. ‘You move,’ he says, ‘when you want. You move.’

  I lie still, holding the moment in all its perfection, holding him.

  It has taken months to get this far, to get this intimate, this confident. We have argued – about the literary worth of Ulysses, Habeas Corpus, state education and whether washing-up is best soaked overnight. We have borne each other’s moods, his silent tension before a work deadline or a first night, my premenstrual snapping, the glumness before the dutiful necessity of a visit home. We have danced and walked and chased buses; we have sweated and kissed through hangovers, headaches, phlegmy coughs; we have shared secrets and laughed and laughed and laughed, at bad films, at Eve, at Pete, Martin’s mate, at ourselves.

  Slowly I tilt my pelvis up, and back. He closes his eyes. His arms are trembling. The moment is moving on, as it must.

  He exhales slowly. Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he lowers himself at last and starts to respond, every so often turning his head, like a swimmer mid-stroke, seeking a gulp of air. ‘Never leave me,’ he whispers. ‘Never leave me. I love you.’

  My ear burns in the heat of his breath. Never,’ I echo, my voice no more than a gasp, but my heart loud and pounding with the lovely certainty that we are at the beginning still, with the best yet to come.

  I save my own first milestone declaration for afterwards, pressing the three words into the salty moistness of his chest; I would brand his skin with them if I could, directly over the spot that screens his heart. Entwined, the sweat chilling on our skin, we lie quietly, basking in an aftermath that seems to transcend physical release to a state of communion that feels far holier than anything I have ever come close to in church.

  Above all, I feel lucky. No one else could ever love, or be loved, so much; certainly not Eve, with her new crush on a third-year rugby star, or Pete, who changes women more frequently than his underwear, and certainly not our respective parents – Martin’s with their petty quarrels and caravan holidays, mine with the now closed sad history of separate beds and separate meals, a shared life shrivelled by betrayal. As to how this history impinged upon my childhood, I have revealed the gist but not the detail. The once sharp outline of the two figures lying on the dusty matting, the hairs on my father’s bare thighs dark against the white tail of his shirt, has faded with time and I have no desire to bring it back into focus. And no need now either, with this new system of faith, love making sense of lust, the lost fairytale of my earliest memory retrieved.

  Chapter Nine

  Martin and Cindy’s housewarming took place on a blustery March evening when temperatures suddenly spiralled down into what felt like a last blast of an attempt at a decent winter before the start of British Summer Time the following day. Theresa had already altered the clocks, a somewhat paranoid anticipation of the time change that stemmed from a chaotic transition the year before when she had deposited the younger boys at a birthday party as the entertainer was finishing, and George, having missed almost an entire rugby game, spent the afternoon sobbing inconsolably into his pillow.

  ‘We haven’t had any snow,’ she complained, as Henry nosed around the Rotherhithe development looking for a parking slot. ‘Not one flake, do you realize that?’

  ‘Yes, we did, in January – that week the boiler packed up and the blocked gutter ruined the wall in the sitting room.’

  ‘There was hardly any though, was there? Not enough to build a snowman. I’ll never forget poor Alfie trying and the others watching through the window. He was using handfuls of mud in the end and got quite upset, do you remember?’

  ‘Indeed I do,’ murmured Henry, although his mind was on Charlotte rather than their son – wishing there was some way she could have been invited to the party too. He hadn’t seen her for weeks, which, with Theresa’s bloodhound capacity for scenting trouble, was probably just as well. Although, if anything, this paucity of contact seemed to be making his obsession worse – terrible, wonderful, graphic, stealthy thoughts assailed him all the time; and with Suffolk coming up, they had a proper focus now. For while denying the relevance of Charlotte’s holiday plans, Henry’s imagination had in fact gone into overdrive, nurturing the prospect of long walks and cups of tea, and maybe, if the nights were cold enough, curling up in front of roaring log fires with a glass or two of wine. It would be a chance – possibly his only chance – to get to know her better, to find out if what he felt really had some justification, some reciprocity.

  Exact dates for his week of study were still moving around the diary, propelled by clinic commitments and Henry’s own terror of showing his hand. With the fantasies, the uncertainty, he was sleeping badly, and yet there was an excitement about the situation that launched him into each new day on an adrenalin high equivalent, he imagined (he had not experimented like most of his fellow medical students), to the ingestion of recreational drugs. It was in the early evenings that he was truly tired, his concentration in tatters; so much so that when Theresa had announced, her tone studiedly light, that Charlotte was no longer seeing her estate agent and wasn’t that typical, he had felt such a rush of energy that he half expected it to lift him off the sofa.

  Instead he had managed, with a supreme effort of will, to contain himself to a raised eyebrow, a tut and ‘Typical’, then to enquire in a languid drawl suggestive of deep indifference, if she could think of a word of seven letters ending in r that might mean explorer.

  ‘Pioneer,’ Theresa had shot back, returning her gaze to the television, an impatient re-crossing of her legs the only remote hint that she had picked up on anything untoward.

  Henry had slowly filled in the letters, then let the crossword blur. The estate agent – bouncy walk, bouncy hair. He had spotted the fellow several times, and for Charlotte to dump him certainly showed the triumph of good taste over desperation, loneliness, rebound syndrome or whatever the hell had prompted her to get involved with such a creature in the first place. Of course she was going to make mistakes: she was adrift, alone and with the sort of fragile beauty that provoked a protective impulse the like of which Henry had only ever before experienced towards his children. Theresa had never been the sort of woman to inspire such reactions. Too much gallantry or sentiment from any man, the remotest suggestion that she needed ‘looking after’, was guaranteed to make sparks fly.

  Which was something to admire, Henry mused, watching his wife’s pale face in the wing-mirror, hair blasting across her cheeks as she beckoned him into a tight fit of a parking space between a Porsche and a stone wall. And where could anything with Charlotte possibly lead anyway? A platonic bond? An illicit affair? Leaving Theresa? It was unthinkable.

  Unthinkable, and yet people did it all the time. People like Martin, Henry reminded himself, as his friend opened the door looking ten years younger in loose dark trousers and a charcoal grey T-shirt, grinning like a cat that had had its whiskers dunked in the proverbial cream. Cindy floated up behind him, smiling more shyly, indisputably glorious in a silky blue dress gathered under her ample bustline and falling in watery shimmers to her knees.

  ‘So this is what you meant by “dress smart casual”, is it?’ Henry accused them, glancing from one to the other and feeling a spurt of pity for Theresa, who had
suffered uncharacteristic agonies over what to wear, veering eventually towards the casual end of the spectrum with a pair of trousers that, these days, cut too deeply into her hips (though Henry had dutifully denied as much when challenged) and which he knew she would now be regretting bitterly.

  The gathering was modest but very slick, Henry decided, as a passing waiter pressed glasses of Kir Royale into their hands and they were ushered into the carpeted open-plan living space, decorated in minimalist style with towering lithe flower arrangements in its corners and large panels of modern art across the walls. The furniture had been pushed back to the perimeter, apart from a baby grand piano, around which a scattering of other early arrivals hovered. These included Sam, looking refreshingly unslick in a pair of trailing jeans and a crumpled dark green sweatshirt. At the sight of Theresa and Henry he broke away from the group and loped across the room, grinning with evident relief.

  ‘Hey. Horrid, isn’t it?’

  ‘Sam!’ scolded Theresa, chuckling.

  Sam swept his fingers through his hair, pulling out the last bits to create the haywire look to his fringe, which was working really well that afternoon, thanks to some experimentation with aerosols and a tub of wax at Cindy’s dressing-table. His mother didn’t have a dressing-table. She put her makeup on in the bathroom and kept her hairdryer in a chest of drawers. Cindy’s table was an Aladdin’s cave in comparison, as was the en suite, where every surface was lined with enough foams, scrubs, oils, conditioners, salts and moisturizers to equip a small chemist. Forbidden normally to venture into this sanctuary, even for a pee, Sam had taken advantage of an hour on his own – while Martin and Cindy collected drink and glasses from the off-licence – to have a squirt of almost every bottle.

  ‘How’s Mum?’ ventured Theresa, judging it the safest line of enquiry among several that sprang to mind, then remembering the estate agent and having second thoughts. We just didn’t hit it off,’ had been Charlotte’s only explanation before she had shifted the focus to Sam, explaining how much happier her son seemed and apologizing – needlessly – for a somewhat puzzling insistence that his thirteenth birthday the previous week pass without fuss. And he had rejected the idea of taking a friend to Suffolk too, she had explained, unwittingly scuppering Theresa’s hopes of sending George.

  Sam was frowning and fiddling with his hair, as if the enquiry about his mother presented quite a challenge.

  Seeing the hesitation, Henry thought wildly, Charlotte is unhappy. She feels as I do and is suffering.

  ‘Mum’s fine,’ Sam declared at last, ‘except her bookshop man was ill again today so she had to bring me here early. She was cross because she’s only supposed to work every other Saturday and only in the morning, not the whole day.’

  ‘Poor Mum. And I gather you’ve had a birthday, haven’t you?’ continued Theresa, brightly.

  ‘Yup. We went to see the latest James Bond and Dad gave me an iPod.’

  ‘Fantastic. A teenager, at long last, eh?’

  A waiter arrived, bearing a tray of canapés, each one a Lilliputian version of a food traditionally designed to take up an entire dinner plate. Sam put up his hand and then, remembering his manners, snatched it away again so the adults could choose first. He slipped his fingers inside the back pocket of his jeans instead, feeling for the corner of the latest letter from Rose:

  We are moving house soon. I like this one quite a lot but it will be cool not to have to catch the bus to school. I hate the bus. Felix always wants to sit next to me and he STINKS.

  Beside the last word she had drawn a little cartoon face with the mouth turned down and the nose screwed up. Sam, who couldn’t draw for toffee, thought it very clever and planned to tell her so in his reply. Defeated by the logistical challenge of stamps, postboxes and avoiding parental detection, they had taken to swapping notes during school. It was weird because in spite of doing this they didn’t actually talk to each other, at least not about anything except pointless stuff like borrowing pencil-sharpeners and how long till the bell. But then Rose was weird and had been from the start. Once part of the reason Sam had felt compelled to twist her arm, it was now what he liked most about her.

  When it was his turn Sam took two miniature pizzas and three baby hamburgers off the plate and shoved them into his mouth in one go. The adults were bored now, he could tell, looking over his head and twiddling their glasses. When George’s dad remarked, licking his fingers, ‘You’ve grown, mate, haven’t you?’ he responded with as polite a nod as he could manage, then shot off in search of his father and permission to retreat to their big double bed and the telly.

  Theresa groaned. ‘You shouldn’t have said that. You know he’s got a thing about being small.’

  ‘Has he? How was I supposed to know that?’

  ‘Everybody knows.’

  ‘Do they? Well, poor little bugger, it’s no wonder he’s got a thing then, is it? Anyway, I said he’d grown, didn’t I? Which he has… dramatically, I’d say.’

  They were rescued from this unsatisfactory but, Theresa decided, pleasingly normal husband–wife exchange by Martin and Cindy, working their way round the clusters of guests like a pair of conjoined twins. When it got to their turn the four of them discussed, with vigour, the windy weather and the virtues of silk flowers versus dried. Henry could feel his wife’s gentle contempt for both the trivial conversation and the juvenile inseparability of their hosts. It was like a radar signal, but visible only to him. Outwardly, she was warm, smiling and delighted, as was he. Pondering this and his own, rather more serious, state of emotional hypocrisy, Henry remembered suddenly a quote from Auden from his school days, about ‘the sane, who know they are acting, and the insane, who think they are not’. At least I’m sane, he consoled himself, at least I know that.

  As the pair moved away, duty done, and Theresa began to voice contempt – were they barnacles? Not to be able to stand up alone? What did Martin think he was proving with that skimpy T-shirt? – Henry found his own similarly critical reflexes softening towards understanding. A new woman, a new life, a clean slate, a second chance, reinvention… yes, he could understand the appeal of that, all right. Appearing to need to keep each other upright or not, the pair looked happy enough to him. And often, he reflected sadly, it was those most ready to knock happiness who were the least contented themselves.

  Every so often the wind actually rocked the car. Charlotte found her hands leaping to the anchorage of the steering-wheel, as if she was trying to control her little vehicle in full flight instead of it being parked tight up against the kerbstone, with the engine off and the street empty. She felt secure under its domed roof, with the thump of the wind outside, and not too cold, even though the heating was off and there was a small hissing noise where air was pumping through the tiny crack at the top of the back window that didn’t close properly. And it was quite nice to watch the way the trees writhed, to witness but not suffer the violence of tossing branches, cartwheeling dustbin lids and the two cones, which had been marking some hazard in the pavement but were now on their sides, rolling against the fence of the derelict church.

  The last of the light was fading fast. The bloody remains of the sun streaked the sky above the slate tops of the houses and the flailing trees.

  I am in a bubble, Charlotte thought, in my bubble car. Nothing can touch me. I am alone, but safe. Up ahead the yellow jasmine tumbling along the wall fronting the cottage had been joined by other dots of colour: candy pink roses and something blue – irises, or were they stocks? Could one stalk a house? Charlotte wondered. Was that what she was doing – trying to stay close to something loved but unattainable? She had taken her own house off the market now, left a message with the pretty Indian girl to pass on to Tim. It was a defeat, of course, the dreadful quibbling Mrs Burgess with her shopping list of faults, the limitations on her budget, the pain of falling for things one could not have, Sam’s crushing lack of enthusiasm. She had surrendered at last, held up her hands, given in.

&nbs
p; Tim had left her a message in return. I am so sorry. Please call at once – any time – if you change your mind. About the house business, of course, but Charlotte knew that he meant the other thing too, the thing that had ended on the night of the dinner, when the ghost of Martin… no – she corrected her thoughts – when the ghost of her love for Martin, known, remembered, but not felt for two decades, had risen out of the soft red cushions and smothered her to the point of screaming. She had screamed, hadn’t she? There had been a noise certainly, sudden, shrill, nerve-jangling, like a screech of brakes. And Tim, sheeny-faced, heavy, grunting, pushing, lost in the final thrall of his climax, had pulled out in the same instant, spilling his cum half on her belly and half among the crumpled folds of her skirt.

  Some deep, reflexive female part of her had felt violated. But it wasn’t rape, of course. Charlotte knew that. In her newly discovered exuberant state she had led him that far, taken him, poor man, to the point of no return, never imagining that her own point of no return lay coiled inside, behind the new hope and the trying and the wine.

  ‘Christ, Charlotte, what did I…? Did I hurt… did I…?’ In different circumstances – in the absence, for instance, of the image of her twenty-year-old self, with her soon-to-be fiancé poised over her, inside her, ready to explode with love as well as physical desire – she might have pitied Tim enough to pat his beefy knee and murmur platitudes, allow some salvaging of his devastated dignity and pride. But Charlotte had been too devastated herself, too mown down by the onrush of the past, the living memory of what it had been to love – really to love – to be able to muster anything beyond a whimper. Tim had clutched at his belt buckle and scrabbled for a box of tissues, pulling out three at once, then dabbing at her stomach like someone attending in panic to a wound.

  After that they had sat, like the strangers they were, waiting for her cab, lost in different mute incomprehension. When the cab was late, requiring a second phone call, drawing out the agony, Tim, stammering, had released the bad news about the Stowes’ decision, saying it looked like they had had someone lined up for a private sale all along. He had meant to tell her before but hadn’t wanted to ruin the evening, but now the evening was ruined anyway. He had done his best, he was sorry, there would be other houses, of course… other vendors, purchasers. He had gathered a bit of steam then, spurred on, perhaps, by the familiar solidity of the jargon of his trade, something to cling to amid the wreckage.