Before I Knew You Page 6

  The distinctive deep set of George’s eyes came from their mother, Beth had observed, during the course of these trials, as did Alfie’s Cupid’s bow mouth and small nose. And she felt duty bound to acknowledge, privately, that Susan did a good job of disguising her ample figure with attractive loose-fitting layers of creamy silk and linen, which probably came from the organic-clothes business William had told her about – describing on one occasion the chaos of looms and wool and swatches that had gradually taken over the ground floor of the Woking home, ghoulishly underscoring the inner disintegration of their last few years.

  The King’s Road was okay, Beth decided, having succumbed to a pair of high-heeled yellow sandals in the shoe shop. She ambled next in the direction of the square Harry had indicated, wishing she had brought her guidebook so she could make better use of her time. For all she knew she was a stone’s throw from the best gallery or monument in town; it seemed such a waste. Spotting the trees Harry had mentioned and with a good twenty minutes left until their rendezvous, she decided to give in to temptation for once and treat herself to a hot chocolate and a cookie. She needed warming up too, thickening cloud and a wind she hadn’t anticipated having made her unbelievably – in spite of pants, sweater and jacket – cold.

  A few minutes later a Starbucks obligingly appeared. Beth purchased her calorific treats and took a seat by the window, thinking how she could have been in New York, except for the weather, which, after nine solid days of squall and cloud, was starting not to feel like such a joke after all. During the time she had spent in the queue, fat dollops of rain had begun pouring from the heavy clouds, battering the pavement like bullets. Beth peered through her section of the window, feeling mild concern for Harry, who had neither a jacket nor an umbrella. No sooner had the thought formed than she glimpsed Harry himself, sauntering among the streams of hurrying shoppers, not only visibly wet, as she had feared, but with a cigarette in one hand and the other across the shoulders of a tall, bony girl with a half-shaved head, a bare midriff and tattoos snaking round her elbows and upper arms.

  Beth got up from her chair and then sat down again. She should wait till they met up, she decided, see how Harry played it. Her thoughts flew to William, boasting of his health-conscious beloved eldest, even more of a star on the rugby pitch than he was in the classroom. There had been something about a junior national swimming squad once too. Beth stared after her stepson as he disappeared into the sheets of rain, wondering also about her forty pounds. But the kid was nearly eighteen and the last thing she wanted was an ugly scene.

  Beth finished every crumb of her cookie and then bought another, eating fast. Halfway out of the door, working at the release on her umbrella, she suddenly remembered the small bag of yellow shoes and ran back inside. Wet from the pavement, the soles of her loafers slid upon contact with the hard, polished floor, propelling her legs forwards while her body flailed behind. Crap, she thought, then said, out loud, as a lunge for the back of an empty chair to prevent the inevitable, only succeeded in bringing it down on top of her.

  4

  The golf course was a surreally perfect, sumptuous composition of undulating green velvet, pitted here and there with neatly scooped bunkers and small, variously shaped lakes, each a glassy reflection of the seamless azure sky. Even the patches of rough were carefully landscaped, comprising attractive clusters of tall, lean trees, manicured shrubbery and grass clearly nurtured into long lush carpets instead of having arrived in such a state by being left to grow as it pleased. Threaded through these splendours was a narrow sandy road designed for golf buggies, beaded at irregular intervals with rustic benches and vending machines, offering snacks as well as juice, Coke and water, all trussed up in wooden casings so as to blend in with the natural beauty of the surroundings.

  Except none of it was natural, Andrew mused, blinking in disbelief as Geoff led the way out of the club house, his mind balking at what such a triumph of man over nature must cost to maintain, let alone build. It was beautiful, of course, but also – he couldn’t help thinking, given the current global context of food, energy and water shortages – faintly obscene.

  And it made him jealous of Geoff, which wasn’t pleasant either. Good old live-for-the-moment, saxophone-playing, beer-swilling, last-to-leave-a-party Geoff, who had somehow spent a decade and a half replacing these fondly remembered attributes with level-headedness, excellent business sense and the luck of the devil. Andrew was aware that his oldest friend had been doing well for himself, from Christmas-card comments, emailed photographs from the decks of boats and the balconies of skiing chalets, not to mention the immaculate cut of his clothes at the college gaudy he had attended a couple of years before; he had unsheathed his own fat post-prandial cigar and talked about the profits and pleasure of investing in modern art. Life was treating him handsomely, that much had been clear.

  But exactly how handsomely had been a shock reserved for Andrew’s arrival at Geoff and Ann’s West Side apartment after they had seen Sophie back onto the train. On the fourteenth floor of an elegant grey-stone block that looked no different from its two neighbours, Andrew was totally unprepared for the open-plan, lofty-roofed grandeur that swung into view as Geoff pushed open the door: oil paintings spread across the walls, marbled floors, huge silk carpets, a long mahogany dining table with fourteen matching chairs (he counted), casually placed Oriental vases – as large as cellos some of them and probably ten times as valuable – and, most stunning of all, an L-shaped sitting room lined with soft tan leather furniture and views over Central Park.

  ‘You like?’ Geoff had pressed, grinning, as he placed a bottle of beer in Andrew’s hands.

  ‘You scumbag,’ Andrew had murmured, shaking his head in wonderment, forgiving his friend’s blatant smugness for the fact of it being so justified. ‘It’s out of this world.’

  After a few more beers Ann had served a splendid meal, as good as in any restaurant, of tomatoes, mozzarella and fresh basil, followed by paunchy fillet steaks with creamy mashed potato and fried zucchini (as his hosts insisted on referring to the succulent breaded slivers of courgette). Geoff had opened one bottle of Montrachet and then a second. Andrew could not remember the last time he had enjoyed himself so much. And part of it, he knew – like some guilty secret – stemmed from the pleasure of being away from Sophie, away from the burden of her hideous low spirits and his helplessness in the face of them.

  ‘Ready, pal?’ Geoff slapped the empty seat of the golf buggy – an accoutrement that, in other circumstances, Andrew might have been tempted to dismiss as a laughable extravagance. In Connecticut in August in a heat-wave, however, it was walking the course that would clearly have been laughable. Already the blue polo shirt Geoff had lent him was clinging uncomfortably to his sweat-soaked chest, while the thin canvas of his Italian cap felt no match for the sun, which was pounding – although the day had barely started – with an intensity that made his ears throb.

  ‘You know I’m rusty, don’t you?’ he warned. ‘Not a stroke since nine holes at a Suffolk links two summers ago.’

  ‘So you keep saying. Got any other excuses to add – like, say, a broken leg? Blindness? That can be impeding, so I’m told. I’ve offered you ten shots. Are you saying you want more?’

  ‘I just don’t want you to be disappointed …’

  ‘Like hell … You’re a bandit, Chapman, you always were. And those clubs you’ve hired are the dog’s bollocks, so we’ll see, shall we? And there’s nothing like one of Ann’s fry-ups to start the day, is there?’

  Andrew responded with an appreciative pat to his stomach. The plate of sizzling egg, bacon and fried potatoes had been just the thing, not only for his appetite but for his head, which, with a malt following the Montrachet, had not been feeling too robust even before they had left the ice-box cool of the apartment.

  At Geoff’s invitation Andrew drove off at the first tee and managed what would have been an adequate strike had his hot hands not slipped on the grip, sending the b
all woefully off course. After a few more similar misshots and the aggravation of thinly disguised chuckling from over his shoulder, Andrew ventured to enquire – with some venom – whether his companion’s huge, zip-infested golf bag housed such a thing as a spare glove.

  ‘Of course. Why didn’t you ask before?’ The item was duly handed over, along with a dry remark about poor workmen and their tools and various more-hesitant quips as Andrew, fired by irritation and his new non-stick palm, began to play well. It was like singing or playing an instrument, he decided, each ball soaring obediently at his touch, as he fell into the trance of performance, letting instinct override intellect, having the courage to fly blind. And not having Sophie, the millstone, that was helping too.

  It took Geoff – visibly digging deeper into the recesses of his concentration with every hole, drawing, perhaps, on the hours of fine-tuning he had boasted of receiving from the club’s resident golf pro – to the very last putt on the eighteenth before his friend was finally beaten. They shook hands, exhilarated with each other and themselves, Andrew relishing the fact not just of having played the best round of golf in his life but of being properly in touch at last with that holiday feeling – unwinding, having fun.

  After a couple of beers they joined Ann at the pool and messed around like teenagers – ducking, diving and racing – until lunch, which they chose to eat under an air-conditioned awning adjoining the main restaurant. Andrew triggered much mirth by ordering shrimp, and then exclaiming in surprise when he was served not the modest dish of prawns he had expected but three sprawling clawed creatures the size of small lobsters. They drank a Chardonnay and then something Californian to go with desserts and a board of cheese. Interrogated about himself properly for the first time, Andrew talked expansively about the increase in distinguished musicians among the pupils since his time at the school, how he was putting several – including Olivia – forward for the RCM, how there weren’t many schools capable of nailing the Brahms Requiem, let alone in one term. He even confessed to the stop-start composing, the promising violin and piano concerto in the bottom of his desk drawer, just waiting to be retackled and pushed to the finishing post, when he had the time, when Sophie was more herself.

  Just saying her name broke the spell.

  ‘Hey, she’ll pick up.’ Geoff patted Andrew’s hand. ‘Women … it’s probably a time-of-life thing, eh?’ He rolled his eyes.

  ‘Geoffrey, that’s hardly appropriate. She’s barely forty,’ Ann scolded. ‘What is she, Andrew, forty-three?’

  ‘Forty-one.’

  ‘There you are.’ She made a face at Geoff. ‘But she’s not right, is she? You can see that a mile off,’ she continued, returning her attention to Andrew, her plump face crumpling with sympathetic concern. ‘And I can’t help thinking, since you said they’d done tests for all the obvious things, that … well … she did have that sister with all those problems, didn’t she? So maybe there’s something that … you know … runs in the family.’

  ‘Sophie’s sister was deprived of oxygen at birth,’ said Andrew, after a long moment, his voice strangled. Several men, probably, had fallen in love with Sophie Weston during the course of the Winchester festival, twenty years before: the uncertain smile, the mane of thick fair hair, cornflower-blue eyes, the curves of her long model legs in drainpipe jeans. But for Andrew it had been meeting the younger sister a few weeks later that had been the turning point. Wheelchair-bound, mute, saucer-eyed, with a skinny, lop-sided rag-doll of a body that needed to be shifted and propped up and turned – the first sight of Tamsin had triggered in him an avalanche of shamefully clichéd, pitying, knee-jerk responses. It was Sophie who had instantly transformed those reactions, then and for ever afterwards, launching into an effortless flow of sisterly chatter, and teasing, and gentle tending, allowing Tamsin to emerge, rather than the limitations of her circumstances. An enactment of love – there was no other way to describe it – so wonderful, so inspiring, that Andrew’s certainty about making a proposal of marriage had blossomed directly out of it.

  ‘And there’s nothing genetic about oxygen deprivation, is there?’ Andrew continued, painfully aware suddenly of the full force of all the alcohol he had consumed and the hot concrete burning through the soles of his shoes.

  ‘No, Andrew, of course there isn’t … I was only saying that I remembered there had been something wrong with her.’

  ‘Tamsin … She was called Tamsin. She died ten years ago.’ Andrew stopped, appalled to find that he was on the verge of tears, not for his dead sister-in-law, as his companions – exchanging anxious glances – supposed, but for the version of Sophie from those early years, the version he had lost.

  ‘Andrew, I’m so sorry, that’s terrible,’ Ann flapped and folded her napkin, smoothing her fingers over the food-stains and imprints left by her pink lipstick. ‘And I didn’t mean … in fact, I … Excuse me.’ She cast Geoff an imploring look and left the table in search of the Ladies.

  Geoff responded by rushing off to seek out a waiter for the check, thereby giving Andrew time to collect himself. ‘Ann meant no offence, as I’m sure you understand,’ he said, squeezing Andrew’s shoulder when he got back to the table. ‘What you need is time out, mate, and I’m going to make damn sure you get it. Okay?’

  Andrew nodded vehemently, still too overcome to speak, not just on account of his friend’s kindness but the unsettling revelation of how thinly layered his self-composure had grown. He experienced in the same instant a burst of resentment at Sophie for allowing such a thing to happen. He needed caring for. He needed tenderness. Once upon a time she had known that. These days, she was too wrapped up in herself to care. Or maybe he was just drunk, Andrew reflected darkly, so nearly losing his balance as he stood up that he took very small, careful steps behind Geoff for the walk back to the pool.

  For the first time since arriving Sophie awoke fully cognizant of the fact that the blurry fall of the tall blue curtains opposite her, their outline burnt with electric precision by the early-morning sun, was real, rather than the lingering image of some strange dream. She was in Connecticut, not Barnes. And she was alone. As this last thought registered, she rolled onto her back and stretched her arms and legs into a star-shape of luxuriating celebration, before closing her eyes and falling instantly back to sleep.

  It was the heat that woke her next (unlike Andrew, she preferred nights without the background hum of air-conditioning), coupled with the pleasurable guilt of the truant. She had got away from Geoff and Ann! She had seen it through, stayed strong in the face of the numerous pleadings and counter-arguments that had pitted the afternoon. Would she manage the train ride? Or the drive from Darien station? Or the sticky lock on the front door? Wouldn’t she mind being alone? At times, Sophie had been close to caving in because she had been nervous, of course, especially of navigating her way back to the house in the tank-sized automatic car, with the roads all looking the same, the names of areas and streets either non-existent or dangling in unexpected places.

  Having successfully negotiated all such obstacles, however, Sophie had found herself in a state of near-joy. She was in a bubble of time in which nothing mattered, she had realized, closing the front door and leaning against it with a sigh. Nothing. Kicking off her shoes, unzipping her skirt, peeling off her shirt, she had floated around the house in her bra and pants, swinging her arms, even singing a little – normally an unheard-of indulgence, thanks to her being in possession of a voice that, compared to the rest of her talented family, was woefully thin and off-key.

  For supper she had crumbled several chocolate-chip cookies into a half-eaten tub of vanilla ice cream, poured herself a glass of white wine and stretched out on the sofa in front of the Stapletons’ large plasma TV. She had watched the movie channel – half of one film about a haunted house and then half of another about a high-powered career woman having a baby. She had eaten directly from the ice-cream tub, using a long spoon, letting each mouthful melt on her tongue before swallowing.
When Andrew phoned, yelping into his mobile about how amazing the Hoopers’ apartment was, saying she had been a fool not to stay, sounding drunk, Sophie had felt so interrupted that it was all she could do not to cut the call short.

  With the glow of last night’s good mood still upon her, Sophie showered and dressed and went downstairs. After retrieving the plastic-wrapped New York Times from the front lawn, she sat at the kitchen table to eat breakfast, starting and then abandoning a bowl of the too-sweet cinnamon wheat flakes masquerading as cereal and having a slice of toast instead, thinly coated with the blueberry ‘jelly’ upon which they had settled after having searched in vain for marmalade. Or by ‘blueberry’ did the Americans mean blackberry? Or maybe blackcurrant? Sophie studied the label on the jar, thinking of Andrew: he was finding the differences in language so interesting he had started a maddening list – Jell-O for jelly, jelly for jam, pants for trousers, pantyhose for tights, sneakers for trainers, traffic circles for roundabouts. He had recited it for Ann and Geoff in the MOMA café, inviting additions. Sophie had torn her paper napkin into thin strips, unable to think of any contribution beyond the fact that being understood had little to do with a common vocabulary.

  Starving, thanks to her lacklustre supper, Sophie smothered a thick layer of the blue stuff on a second piece of toast and got up to look out of the garden doors while she ate it. They had yet to find a switch for the sprinkler system (a mystifying omission from the copious notes left next to the phone) and in consequence the grass had taken on a visibly sickly yellow hue. Soon it would be dead, Sophie reflected, trying to evoke a sense of urgency at the prospect as she squinted through the glass. It occurred to her in the same instant that, having used the cat as the clinching pretext for her early return from New York, she had yet to see any sign of it.

  Maybe the animal simply didn’t like them, she mused, fighting a dim sense of insult as she unlocked the doors and called its name into the hot silence of the garden. It certainly hadn’t liked Andrew’s desultory effort at ‘grooming’ a couple of days before, leaping away in a flurry of spitting indignation the moment he had touched it with the comb. They had had no practice with pets, that was the trouble. They had seen off phases of supplication for puppies and ponies from the girls, making do with the regular visits of Mrs Hemmel’s lovely ginger tom, until a speeding car had managed to crush his dear tiger-striped body between its tyres and the kerb.