The bar is a small square room with a parquet floor and floral wallpaper. A few tables covered in white tablecloths line two of the walls. The wooden upright chairs are all different, as if recovered from skips. There are candles in teacups on the tables. The fireplace is full of empty bottles of Mumm champagne. All this is a conscious ironic retro look, designed to call to mind perhaps a 1950s tea room, though the crowd who gather here do not drink tea.
Chloe heads for the corner table where she and Guy sat yesterday and orders herself the same drink he bought her yesterday, a cocktail called Re-bourne. She has a little time to herself before Guy joins her. They are here to celebrate their hundredth-hour anniversary, which they have agreed will occur at 6.25 p.m.
He’ll be late, of course. He was there before her on their first date, but has since made clear that was exceptional. I’ll be there when I can, he says. Expect me when you see me.
So he has other concerns that take priority over seeing her. This too thrills Chloe. It makes her crave his presence and value every minute. How does he get away with it? He’s a goodlooking man but there are plenty of others who are more her style. You wouldn’t accuse Guy of being cool. He dresses like James Stewart in some black-and-white movie, only without the tie. She’d thought of buying him a tie for Christmas, but in the end she’s bought him a key ring with an enamel cupcake on a chain. God knows why. It was cheap and the cupcake looked indulgent.
Her cocktail comes and she starts drinking it, sharp and zingy and big on the gin. Her phone shivers. It’s Hal.
‘Hi, Hal,’ she says, unable to keep the impatience from her voice. ‘Can’t talk right now.’
He wants to know what she wants for Christmas. What’s she supposed to say to that? Everything. Anything. Don’t make me do the work of pleasing myself. Be like Guy. He gives me nothing.
‘You okay?’ says Hal. ‘You sound weird.’
‘I’m in a basement bar, okay?’
‘Why? Who are you with?’
‘I’m with whoever I fucking feel like being with, Hal. Don’t hassle me like this. I don’t like it. Now I’ve got to go. Look after yourself.’
She ends the call dead on 6.25 p.m., but no sign of Guy coming down the iron steps from the street. She wouldn’t mind a quick pee but she doesn’t want Guy to show up and find her not there.
I’m hooked on this man. He’s my drug of choice. Fuck knows why. He’s a selfish bastard who only ever does what the fuck he likes, and right now what he likes to do is me.
There’s the liberation. Chloe feels set free, floating, flying. She has no responsibility for anything. She’s the object of his delight. His desire for her is like a warm wind. Hal wants her too, but his is a needy grasping want, he drags her down until all she can do is push him away. No need to push Guy away. Let him out of your sight for a minute and he’s gone. All the advantages of having an affair with a married man and it isn’t even adultery.
Then there’s the sex. Maybe that’s all there is to it in the end, but that’s okay. It’s enough to be going on with. Never like this before. Never before the electric shock of command. Takes an older man to know how to do it. She does everything he asks, and the more she does, the more turned on she gets.
He’s late. The bastard is late. My beautiful bastard.
She gets out the key ring with the cupcake and puts it on the white tablecloth before her. Some other people in the bar now, two boys and two girls, all skinny jeans and tiny tops, you can hardly tell them apart. Whose idea was this place? The flowery wallpaper and the teacups and the boy-girls drinking bourbon and tequila.
The bar is a long hatch in the wall, its counter decorated with a vase of lilies. On the street side there’s a high wide window through which you can see the hard diagonal of the iron staircase. What kind of flowers are they on the wallpaper? White, cabbagey, bigger than roses. The teacup has flowers on it too. She looks underneath and it’s Lady’s Slipper, Royal Stafford Ware. What was all that about men drinking champagne out of a lady’s slipper?
Suddenly he’s there. He’s dropping down beside her, giving her a peck on the cheek, ordering himself an Asahi beer.
‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘Nightmare day. Something came up and I lost half the day and I still haven’t caught up.’
‘Poor baby,’ she says, gently mocking. She puts one hand lightly on his thigh. He looks away.
‘I can’t stay long,’ he says. ‘I’m going to have to pull an allnighter.’
‘No time for little me?’
‘Sorry, babe.’
She strokes his thigh, letting her hand creep round to his crotch.
‘I’m sure you can spare half an hour.’
‘Not tonight,’ he says. ‘One beer and I’m gone.’
Chloe withdraws her hand. She doesn’t understand. He’s not connecting with her the way he has done on their previous dates. He’s not even looking at her. Something is wrong.
His beer comes. He drinks from the bottle.
‘So did you get any Christmas shopping done?’ he says.
‘No.’ What’s this, small talk? ‘I’ve decided to give Christmas a miss this year.’
‘Oh? Why’s that?’
‘Does it matter? Do you care about Christmas?’
‘Not really. Not my scene.’
Do you care about me?
‘What is your scene, Guy?’
‘I don’t think I have a scene,’ he says. ‘In the great drama of life I haven’t been assigned a role. I look on from the wings.’
What the fuck’s that all about?
‘What is it?’ she says. ‘What’s got to you?’
‘You don’t want to know,’ he says.
‘Maybe I can help.’
‘No, babe. You can’t help.’ He looks at her at last, but it’s a look she’s not seen before. It turns her cold inside. ‘We had some fun, right? Let’s leave it at that.’
‘What do you mean, leave it at that?’
‘Quit while we’re ahead.’
‘Quit?’
This makes no sense to her. Is she being dumped?
‘What’s the problem? You like being with me, don’t you?’
‘You know I do. But I’m the wrong guy for you, babe. I’m too old and too selfish.’
‘So maybe I like selfish old men. That’s up to me, isn’t it?’
She feels herself trembling. Why is he doing this? Has he met someone else?
‘No,’ he says. ‘It’s up to me, too. It takes two.’
‘Have you found someone else?’
‘Someone else? Christ, no. When would I have the time?’
‘Have you got bored with me?’
‘No, of course not.’
‘So why talk about ending it? I’m not asking for any more than you want to give, am I? I don’t care if all you want is sex. That’s fine with me. It’s great sex. Bring it on.’
He looks at her with that faraway look that so frightens her.
‘I’m wrong for you, Chloe. You know it.’
‘I do not know it! Don’t tell me what’s right and wrong for me. I don’t want to be protected. I want to be fucked.’
‘You want a lover.’
‘So be my lover.’
‘That’s the thing. I’m not a lover. I don’t do love.’
‘I don’t care.’
‘You will.’
‘Don’t keep saying that!’
She wants to scream, to hit him. She wants to burst into tears. The foursome at the other table are listening openly. Everything has turned horrible.
‘What do I have to do to make you believe me?’
‘Not care about what I’m saying,’ he says.
There’s the trap. If all she wants is sex, why not let him go? The world’s full of boys only too ready to oblige.
But I don’t want love. He’s wrong about that. I don’t want love, I want him. That’s not love.
‘Of course I care,’ she says. ‘I want to see you again.’
?
??I think we shouldn’t do that.’
‘Not see each other again? Why?’
It comes out of her as a howl of pain. What happened to making no demands? Turns out it’s easy not to be needy when he’s all over you. Then his hands go back in his pockets and the needs shoot up like weeds. Like bindweed. Christ, I’d bind him to me if I could.
Oh my beautiful lover don’t leave me.
‘I’m no good for you, Chloe. And that means the more time I spend with you, the more damage I do. And I don’t want to do any more damage than I have to.’
‘What damage? There isn’t any damage. You teach me, you make me grow up, you give me pleasure. That’s not damage. I should know, shouldn’t I? Where’s the damage?’
‘That’s just the way it looks to me, okay?’
Now she’s actually for-real crying. The whole pity-me tears thing. It’s humiliating. She doesn’t want to. All it does is make him think he’s right. Her mind is saying, Fine, if you want out then, sayonara, honey. Her mind is saying, Look at me, I’m dancing. But her heart is blubbing its eyes out.
The boy-girls are watching and smirking and whispering to each other. The bar has become hateful, with its faux-cosy décor and its tea-lights. Unable to bear it a moment longer, she jumps up, grabs her coat, and heads for the stairs. He can come if he wants.
Out in the ice-cold air of the street she stamps her high-heeled feet to keep warm and waits for him to follow her. Which he does. She takes his hands and gazes at him with moist and wounded eyes.
‘So you don’t want to see me again? Is that it?’
‘That’s it,’ he says. His voice is gentle, but there’s no apology, no possibility of appeal.
‘This is so stupid. You know that.’
‘I should never have let it happen in the first place.’
‘You? What about me? You don’t control the fucking master switch. I’m in this too.’
But he does control the master switch. Her heart is breaking. How is that possible? A selfish bastard, and her heart is breaking.
‘We had a bit of fun together. Don’t hate me for that.’
Don’t love me for that. That’s the message.
Summoning the very last of her failing strength, Chloe puts on a smile. Go down guns blazing.
‘Okay, big boy. Call me if you change your mind. But I may not answer.’
She gives him a kiss on the cheek and she walks away. She walks as fast as she can because it’s cold and she doesn’t want to look back. But then at last she does look back. He’s already gone.
So that’s it.
Now she lets herself cry. She walks back down Oxford Street weeping helplessly, raging helplessly, wounded as she’s never been before, hurting for love.
But I never asked for anything. It’s not like I wanted to marry him, for fuck’s sake.
She remembers the Christmas present she got him, the cupcake on the key ring. She forgot to pick it up. It’ll still be on the white tablecloth in the bar.
I bought him a ring.
Oh, fuck. Of course I love him. Of course I want to stay with him for ever. That’s what love is, right? So what if there’s some damage along the way. I want the love, I’ll take the damage. There’s no one else. Only you. What am I supposed to do now?
The lights of Oxford Street hurt her eyes with their cold cheer. Crowds block the lonely pavements. People bunch at street crossings and surge forward again, meshing without contact. She walks on the kerb. She doesn’t want to be one of them, the lumpy bodies with their sightless eyes.
I’m young. I want to live. You love or you die. Hold me in your arms, I’m not asking for too much. Only life.
36
A road of tidy red-brick semis, fitfully illuminated by street lamps. Cars parked nose to tail along the kerb. Lit windows restless with the jumpy glow of television screens.
Meg drives slowly, looking for house numbers on gates and doors, failing to find or to read a single one. Then she sees the red pick-up that the plumber drives, and so locates his house, Number 45.
Strange to be paying a social call on her plumber, but life has become strange. Or gone back to the way it was: exile once more. The day she learned her brother was leaving their shared room. The night when there came no answering whisper to her whisper.
Grateful for the chance to be somewhere new, to get out of her flat. Two nights sleepless in the bed where once—
Her mind has learned to flinch. Turn away from that memory. Closer than a memory: the pain with her every moment of the day, cold as winter air. And waiting beyond the pain the deeper darkness, a night sky of fear without end.
Alone for ever. Alone for ever.
Not too proud then to accept the plumber’s invitation. No, no pride. At work she keeps her eyes averted, not wanting to see the pity in their eyes. She takes her lunch alone.
There is no one in all the world who needs me.
She finds a space at last where she can park, some way from Matt’s house. Out on the pavement she pulls her coat tight round her, a dark red knee-length wool coat from Hobbs. She bought it the day Tom said they might go to Paris, she thinks of it as her smart coat. And here she is, wearing it to call on a plumber who lives on the Neville estate.
But the thought of Matt Early is comforting to her. His quietness and tidiness in doing his work; his modesty, the way he looks down at the ground, his soft-spoken voice; his air of authenticity, that he is what he is; and lastly a quality in him she guesses at, but which she is sure he possesses, which she wants to call goodness. Meg hungers for goodness. All the pain she feels over Tom has turned inwards and is lacerating her with self-punishment. She blames herself entirely. She allowed herself to believe a lie, and it’s the lie that hurts far more than the sexual transgression. She allowed herself to believe that Tom wanted her – no call to use the word ‘love’, no place for the word ‘love’ – when all he wanted was ‘it’. She feels tarnished by the lie, dirtied by it. She has no one she can tell. Nor does she want to tell. She has no appetite for wails of female solidarity, Oh men are all the same, men are only ever after one thing. She entered on the affair with her eyes open, she was not deceived by Tom. She was deceived by herself.
A little low gate leads into a paved path across a neatly maintained front garden. Curtains drawn in the lit front room. A front door with a panel of frosted glass. She rings the bell.
Matt is a good man, and he plays the violin. In his presence she will be clean again. He has sought her company, and she is grateful. All here is ordinary, all is decent.
The door opens and there he is, blinking a little, as if roused from sleep. The sounds of a television. She can tell from his face that he had not been sure she would come, and is a little amazed to see her.
‘Come in, come in,’ he says. ‘So you found us all right?’
‘Yes. No problem.’
‘My mother is watching TV. She doesn’t get about so well. I have to look after her a bit.’
He leads Meg into the lounge. Here a small red-haired woman is sitting in a large armchair with a rug over her lap and a supper tray on the table by her side, watching Emmerdale. She turns her eyes from the screen to give Meg a look of close appraisal.
‘Mum, this is Meg. She’s come to see my violins.’
‘Nice to meet you, I’m sure,’ says Mrs Early. ‘So you like violins?’
‘I like music,’ says Meg.
‘Music, is it?’ says Mrs Early, as if she isn’t fooled for one moment by Meg’s fabrications.
‘We’ll leave you to your TV,’ says Matt, beckoning Meg to follow him.
‘Yes, I expect you will,’ says Mrs Early.
Matt goes through the kitchen and out the back door. Meg follows.
‘Best to leave her alone,’ he says apologetically. ‘She’s not used to company.’
‘Does she have health problems?’ says Meg. Something about the rug puts her in mind of patients in hospitals.
‘She’s got a spot of arthritis.
But she’s got too much time and not enough to do, if you really want to know.’
He crosses the back garden to a large shed. He takes out a key and unlocks the door.
‘Best to keep your coat on. I’ve got an electric radiator out here, but I don’t keep the place all that warm.’
He switches on lights. The shed is big and crowded, but in a neat and orderly way. Every inch of wall space has its shelf or rack or hook, holding instruments, tools, and materials for the making of violins. The violins themselves lie on pegs, row upon row, reaching up to the ceiling.
‘Heavens!’ exclaims Meg. ‘How many violins did you say you have?’
‘About forty,’ says Matt. ‘But most of them are waiting to be restored.’
‘Can some of them be played?’
‘One or two.’
He takes one down from the rack, and reaches for a bow.
‘This one’s my favourite because it’s the first one I ever restored. I bought it for five pounds. I’ve kept it ever since.’
He runs the bow over the strings, his head cocked to one side to hold the violin in place. The strings sing.
‘The end block and the end ribs were out of alignment. I re-bushed the peg holes and fitted new pegs.’
He plays a few soft sweet notes.
‘I was ten years old.’
Meg is captivated. Matt has become lighter and surer, he smiles as he handles the violin. He knows exactly what to do, she thinks. He has perfect touch.
‘That is so incredible,’ she says. ‘You were only a boy!’
‘I grew up with fiddles. My dad played the fiddle. Just for his own pleasure, nothing special. But he’d play at barn dances and the like. Mum used to say she was a fiddle widow.’
‘Your dad’s dead, then?’
‘Yes. Dad left us, oh, ten years ago now.’
He plays a light tune on the violin, one she recognizes but can’t name.
‘What’s that?’
‘Bobby Shafto.’
‘So do you play at barn dances?’
‘No, I don’t do any of that.’
He says it as if it’s self-evident that such a venture is beyond his capabilities.