Karen switched on the stereo and strange noises came from it.
“What’s that?” demanded Charlotte in shock.
“Jazz.” Karen sounded slightly embarrassed.
“Jazz?” snorted Charlotte derisively. “But we hate jazz. Don’t we, Lucy?”
“Yes.” I was happy to confirm.
“What do we call people who like jazz, Lucy?” asked Charlotte.
“Goateed, beatnik art students?” I suggested.
“That’s it,” she said in glee. “Guys who wear black French polos and ski pants.”
“Maybe, but we like jazz now,” said Karen firmly.
“You mean, Daniel does,” muttered Charlotte.
Karen looked exquisite—or ridiculous, depending on your point of view. She wore a pale green, off-the-shoulder, Grecian type of dress. Her hair was up, but lots of it was falling down in little curls and tendrils. She shone; she looked so much more glamorous and soignée than Charlotte or I. I was wearing my gold dress, the one I had worn the night I had met Gus, because it was the only
dressy-up dress I had, but it looked tatty and bedraggled compared to Karen’s splendour.
Charlotte, to be frank, looked a bit of a mess, even worse than me. She wore the only formal dress that she had, the one she had worn when she was her sister’s bridesmaid, a huge red taffeta meringue. I think she must have put on some weight since the wedding, because her chest fairly exploded from the strapless bodice. Karen looked very doubtful when Charlotte rustled out from her bedroom, said, “Da, daaah!” and did a little pirouette. She probably wished she had allowed Charlotte to wear her cowgirl outfit after all.
Karen had given frantic instructions. “Now when they arrive, I’ll keep them talking in the front room, Lucy, you turn on the oven at a very low heat to warm the potatoes and Charlotte, you stir the…”
She paused suddenly, a horrified look on her face.
“The bread, the bread, the bread,” shrieked Karen. “I forgot to buy the bread. Everything’s ruined! Totally ruined. They’ll all have to go home.”
“Karen, calm down. It’s on the table,” said Charlotte.
“Oh. Oh. Oh, thank God. Is it really?” She sounded close to tears. Charlotte and I exchanged long-suffering looks.
Karen was quiet for a moment, then she looked at the clock.
“Where the fuck are they?” she demanded, lighting a cigarette. Her hand shook.
“Give them a chance,” I said soothingly. “It’s just eight.”
“I said eight o’clock on the dot,” said Karen aggressively.
“But no one takes that seriously,” I murmured. “It’s considered bad manners to arrive on time.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to remind her that it was only a dinner party and that the guest of honor was just Daniel, but I stopped myself in time. Waves of aggression came from her.
We sat in tense silence.
“No one’s coming,” said Karen tearfully, gulping back a glass of wine. “We may as well throw it all out. Come on, let’s go to the kitchen and fling it all in the garbage.”
She banged her glass down on the table and stood up.
“Well, come on,” she ordered.
“No!” said Charlotte. “Why should we throw it out? After all the trouble we’ve gone to? We can eat it ourselves and we’ll freeze what we don’t eat.”
“Oh, I see,” said Karen, nastily. “We can eat it ourselves, can we? What makes you so certain that no one’s coming? What do you know that I don’t?”
“Nothing,” declared Charlotte in exasperation. “But you said…”
The doorbell rang. It was Daniel. Relief was written all over Karen’s beautifully made-up face. My God, I thought with a little jump, she really is bonkers about him.
Daniel was wearing a dark suit and a dazzling white shirt, which set off the faint tan he still had from his vacation in Jamaica in February. He looked tall and dark and handsome, he smiled a lot, his hair flopped over his forehead and he had brought two bottles of chilled champagne—the ideal guest. I couldn’t help smiling. Perfectly dressed, beautifully behaved, and just ever so slightly clichéd.
He said all the things that nice polite people say when they come to dinner at your house, like, “Mmmm, something smells delicious,” and, “You look wonderful, Karen. And you, Charlotte.”
Only when he got to me did his impeccable manners slip a little.
“What are you laughing at, Sullivan?” he demanded. “My suit? My hair? What is it?”
“Nothing,” I protested. “Nothing at all. Why should I laugh at you?”
“Why change the habit of a lifetime?” he muttered. Then he moved away from me and said more of those polite guest things like “Can I do anything to help?” knowing that the answer would be an avalanche of “Nos” and “Not at alls” and slightly hysterical “Everything’s under controls”!
“Have a drink, Daniel,” said Karen graciously, as she swept him into the living room. Charlotte and I attempted to follow them but Karen stuck her head back out at us. “Get stirring,” she hissed, blocking our entrance, as I ran into the back of Charlotte.
The doorbell rang again. Simon this time. As always he was dressed to kill, wearing a dinner suit and a red satin cummerbund that looked really stupid. He had brought a bottle of champagne also.
Oh dear, I thought. Gus is going to be the odd man out—more than usual, that was. Gus wouldn’t bring champagne. Gus probably wouldn’t bring anything.
Not that it would embarrass me, but I was worried that it might embarrass him.
I wondered if I could run out to the liquor store to buy some champagne and slip it to Gus when he arrived, but I was on potato-heating duty so I was confined to barracks.
Simon said, as Daniel had moments earlier, “Mmmm, something smells delicious.”
Gus wouldn’t. Gus would say, “Where’s the spuds, I’m starving.”
“How’s it all going?” asked Karen, appearing at the kitchen door. She had obviously left Daniel and Simon to do some awkward male bonding in the front room.
“Fine,” I said.
“Watch that sauce, Lucy,” she said anxiously. “If there are lumps in it, I’ll kill you.”
I said nothing. I felt like throwing the saucepan across the kitchen at her.
“And where’s your crazy Irishman?”
“On his way.”
“He’d better hurry up.”
“Don’t worry.”
“What time did you tell him?”
“Eight o’clock.”
“It’s a quarter past now.”
“Karen—he’ll be here.”
“He’d better.”
Karen swished back to the front room, with a bottle of something under her arm.
I kept stirring the sauce, a tiny little flutter of anxiety coming to life in my stomach.
He would be here.
But I hadn’t spoken to him since Tuesday and I hadn’t seen him since Sunday. That suddenly seemed like an awfully long time. Time for him to have forgotten me?
A little while later Karen was back.
“Lucy,” she yelled. “It’s half past eight!”
“So?”
“So where the hell is Gus?”
“I don’t know, Karen.”
“Well,” she sputtered. “Don’t you think you had better find out?”
“Why don’t you call him?” suggested Charlotte. “Just to make sure that he hasn’t forgotten. He might have gotten the day wrong.”
“He might have got the year wrong,” said Karen, nastily.
“I’m sure he’s on his way,” I said, “but I’ll give him a call just in case.”
I sounded a lot more confident than I felt. I wasn’t at all sure that he was on his way. Anything could have happened to Gus. He could have forgotten, he could have got delayed, he could have fallen under a bus. But I wasn’t going to let anyone know how worried I was.
I was embarrassed. I felt ashamed. Both their boy
friends had arrived on time. With bottles of champagne. My boyfriend was already half an hour late and he wouldn’t even have a bottle of tap water with him when he did eventually turn up.
If he turns up, said a little voice in my head.
Panic rushed through me. What if he didn’t arrive? What if he didn’t come and didn’t call and I never heard from him again? What would I do?
I tried to calm myself down. Of course he would come. He was probably outside right now. He really liked me and he obviously cared about me, of course he wouldn’t abandon me.
I didn’t want to call him, I had never called him. He had given me his phone number when I had asked for it, but I had gotten the feeling that he wasn’t that eager for me to call him. He said that he hated phones, that they were a necessary evil. And there had never been any need for me to call him because he always called me, and now that I thought of it, they always seemed to be brief calls from a pay phone somewhere noisy. Or else he stopped by my apartment or picked me up from work.
We certainly didn’t spend hours and hours on the phone whispering and giggling to each other, the way Charlotte and Simon did.
I found his number in my purse and dialled it. His phone rang and rang forever and no one answered.
“No answer,” I said in relief. “He must be on his way.”
Just then someone picked up the phone at the other end.
A man’s voice said “Hello.”
“Er, hello, can I speak to Gus?”
“Who?”
“Gus. Gus Lavan.”
“Oh, him. No, he’s not here.”
I put my hand over the mouthpiece. “He’s on his way.” I smiled at Karen.
“When did he leave?” she asked.
“How long ago did he leave?” I parroted.
“Let’s see, ooh, about two weeks ago, I suppose.”
“Wha…at?”
My horror must have shown on my face because Karen burst out, “I don’t believe it! I bet the little bastard just left five minutes ago. Well, tough for him because we’re going to start without him…”
Her voice trailed away as she marched down the hall, no doubt to galvanize Charlotte into finalizing the appetizers.
“Two weeks?” I asked quietly. Horrified and all as I was, I knew that this was something best kept to myself. It would be far, far too humiliating to broadcast it to my roommates and their boyfriends.
“About two weeks,” said the voice, considering. “Ten days, something like that.”
“Oh, well, er, thanks.”
“Who’s calling anyway? Is it Mandy?”
“No,” I said, feeling as if I was going to burst into tears. “It’s not Mandy.”
Who the fuck was Mandy?
“Can I give him a message if I happen to see him again?”
“No. Thank you. Goodbye.”
I hung up. Something was wrong. I knew it. This was not normal behaviour. Why hadn’t Gus mentioned that he was leaving his apartment? Why hadn’t he given me his new phone number? And where on earth was he now?
Daniel had come out to the hall. “Christ, what’s wrong with you?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, attempting a smile.
Karen came back down the hall.
“Sorry, Lucy, we’ll wait a little bit longer for him.”
Oh no. No, no, no. I didn’t want any waiting to be done. I had a horrible feeling that he wasn’t going to come. I didn’t want us all to sit watching the door because then it would be so obvious when he didn’t arrive. I wanted the evening to proceed without him. And then, if he arrived, it would be a bonus.
“Er, no, Karen, we may as well start.”
“No, honestly, another half hour won’t matter that much.”
It was typical. Karen was being nice—which didn’t happen very often—and for once I didn’t want her to be.
“Come in and sit down and have a glass of wine,” suggested Daniel. “You’re as white as a ghost, you look exhausted.”
We trooped into the front room and I took a glass of wine from someone’s hand and tried to act normal.
The others were acting relaxed and happy, chatting, lolling about, sipping wine, but I was rigid with tension, white-faced, silent, straining to hear the sound of the doorbell, praying to hear the phone.
Oh, please, Gus, don’t do this to me, I begged silently. Please God, please God, make him come.
In what seemed like thirty seconds later, it was nine o’clock.
Time was such a contrary bastard. When I wanted it to gallop along, it slowed to a standstill. It could take up to twenty-four hours for an hour to pass.
And now that I wanted time to stop, it was racing.
Whenever there was a lull in the conversation—and there were a few, because we were all slightly uncomfortable with so much formality in our own home and enough wine hadn’t yet been drunk—someone would say, “What’s keeping Gus?” or “Where’s he coming from? Camden? He might have trouble on the tube,” or “I’m sure he didn’t realize that you meant eight o’clock so literally.”
Nobody seemed terribly worried. But I was.
I was scared.
It wasn’t just the fact that he was late—although that was deeply embarrassing after all the fuss Karen had made about the dinner—but his lateness, taken in conjunction with his having moved out of his apartment without telling me. Now that was ominous. No matter what way I looked at it, I felt it was not A Good Thing.
I kept having little stabs of despair.
What if he didn’t come?
What if I never saw him again?
And who was Mandy?
I made attempts to join in with the slightly self-conscious camaraderie in the living room, tried to listen to what they were saying, to force a smile onto my rigid, white face.
But I was so agitated, I could hardly sit still for a moment.
And then the pendulum swung back in the other direction and I calmed down. After all he was only an hour, well an hour and a quarter—damn, was it an hour and a quarter already?—late. He would probably arrive in a moment, a little bit drunk, with some hilarious, outlandish excuse. I was always overreacting to things, I told myself sternly. I was certain that he would come and I was slightly amused at how easy it was for me to think the worst.
Gus was my friend. We’d become close over the past couple of months, I knew he cared about me and that he wouldn’t let me down.
Chapter 40
By ten o’clock the potato chip bowls were all emptied and everyone seemed to be drunk.
“I’m not listening to any more of this,” announced Charlotte, turning off the stereo. “Jazz, my ass.”
Karen allowed Charlotte to change the tape, which meant that she too must have had enough of John Coltrane’s later meanderings.
“Okay then,” announced Karen, changing the subject. “Gus or no Gus, it’s time to eat. I want you to have the delicious food before you’re all too drunk to appreciate it.
“Dinner is served. Charlotte, Lucy.” She motioned us toward the door.
That was our cue to become serving wenches.
I couldn’t eat anything. I was still hoping desperately that Gus would show up. Just arrive along with some fantastic, outrageous excuse. I won’t be mad at you, Gus, I promised fervently. Honestly, just get here and I won’t say a thing.
After a while everyone stopped saying things like “I
wonder what’s keeping Gus,” and “What could have happened to Gus,” and looking out the window to see if a taxi was coming up the road with Gus inside it.
In fact, everyone took great care not to mention Gus at all. It had become clear that Gus wasn’t merely late, but that he wasn’t coming.
They all knew that I’d been stood up and, in their awkward, embarrassed way, they were trying to pretend that I hadn’t been and if I had, that they certainly hadn’t noticed. I knew they were just trying to be kind, but their kindness was humiliating.
The evening was inte
rminable. There was so much food, so many courses, I thought it would never end. I would have given anything to go to bed, but pride forbade me.
It was only much, much later when everyone was really drunk—as opposed to just very drunk—that the subject of Gus was brought up again.
“Dump the fucker,” slurred Karen. Her hairdo was keeling over to one side. “How dare he treat you like this? I’d kill him.”
“Let’s give him a chance.” I smiled tensely. “Anything could have happened to him.”
“Oh come on, Lucy,” scoffed Karen. “How can you be such an idiot? It’s obvious that he’s stood you up.”
Of course it was obvious that he’d stood me up, but I was hoping to hang on to a remnant of my dignity by pretending that he hadn’t.
Daniel and Simon looked uncomfortable. Simon said heartily to Daniel, “Well, how’s work?”
“He could have called,” said Charlotte.
“Maybe he forgot,” I said miserably.
“Well, he shouldn’t have,” slurred Karen.
“Have you checked the phone?” Charlotte shouted sud
denly. “I bet the phone is broken, the lines are down or something, that’s why he hasn’t called.”
“I doubt it,” said Karen.
“Maybe you didn’t hang it up right,” suggested Daniel. “Maybe it’s off the hook and he hasn’t been able to get through.”
Because Daniel had suggested it, the idea was given a bit of credibility. There was a surge toward the hall, me at the head of it, hoping against hope that Daniel was right. Of course he wasn’t. There was nothing wrong with the phone and the receiver had been replaced perfectly.
How embarrassing.
“Maybe something’s happened to him,” I suggested hopefully. “Maybe he’s had an accident. He could have been knocked down and killed,” I said, fresh hope surging through me. Far better for Gus to be lying broken and bloodied beneath the wheels of a truck than for him to have decided that he didn’t like me anymore.
Karen was having a passionate but hard-to-follow argument with Simon about Scottish nationalism when the knock on the door finally came.
“Quiet,” shouted Daniel. “I think someone’s at the door.”
We fell silent—surprise, rather than the desire to hear, robbed us of the power of speech.