Is it me who’s thinking this? Or is it something I’m just meant to think?
I am waiting for Veronica, who is in the bathroom, making final preparations for our trip to some obscure island in Greece. I feel light-headed and giddy, but the suspension that held me apart from my life has gone, and I am connected to the present and the future instead of just the past. I know there will be endless problems and failures in the future, just as there have been in the past, but it will be a different kind of problem, a new kind, a whole new vista of mistakes, cruelties, reconciliations, of as yet unknown love.
I hear Veronica moving about in the bathroom and find myself distracted, impatient. I thrust my hand in my pocket. Something rustles there, smooth against my hand.
It’s the gift Colin gave me on the church steps. Idly, I tear off the shiny paper, which is undecorated, a solid block of red. I imagine the gift to be some kind of half-mad fragment of scripture, or perhaps a biblical calendar. It is certainly simply made of paper, but it seems old, worn out, ripped at the edges. It is folded into four segments and tied with a piece of simple string.
I cannot undo the knot on the string, so I find a knife from the kitchen and cut it open. Then slowly, so delicate does the paper seem, I unfold it, and blink at what is revealed. I cannot at first say what it is, a mess of flaking colours and uncertain shapes. Then at once it comes to me. I see the yellow sun, the sky the colour of a Zoom ice lolly, I see the two figures on the empty beach, the rolling dunes, the concentration of love at the centre of it. I stare at Colin and me, our lost childhood selves.
Then Veronica walks in the room, in a simple black dress, no make-up, a faint, vulnerable smile, and I glance back at the picture and think that I understand, for the first time, the power of the feeling that went into the making of it. For the first time, I understand the picture. It makes me want to weep.
I slowly fold it up again and put it carefully to one side. I lean over to give Veronica a kiss. She kisses back quickly, briskly, has returned slightly to her old efficiency, but she too has changed. She is dreamy, softened. Maybe, like me, on this day, at this time, she thinks it will last. And who am I to say that it won’t? Nothing’s certain. Everything that marriage is there to deny is what, in the end, gives it hope.
Looking forward to the honeymoon? she says.
Christ, yes. I want it to go on for ever. Already, I’m dreading having to go back to the office. And we haven’t even started yet.
She smiles. I turn to her with a sudden burst of earnestness.
You know… maybe… just maybe… I’ll give up this estate agent lark. All this lying, finagling, dodgy dealing. Maybe I’ll go back to university – a proper university, Oxford or Cambridge, not Staines Tech. Maybe I’ll study a proper subject. After all, I am clever. More clever than that job deserves. Do a degree in literature, or history.
Veronica looks at me cautiously. She gives me a look which says, What?!
I start to laugh, right deep in the belly.
Vronky, you’re bang on. I like being an estate agent. It’s my… it’s my destiny. It’s great. I like lying. I’m good at it. Who wants to study for three years and come out with a headache, and knowing less than you did before? Stuff that for a game of soldiers. I am… I am Frank the Fib, the legendary Frank the Fib, of Farley, Ratchett & Gwynne.
She throws her arms around me.
Frank the Fib, she says, her eyes shining, just like in the movies. Then she says, Tell me a lie.
I’m hardly listening. I look down at her big face, her smudgy nose, her wonderful glowing eyes, and a wave of emotion sweeps over me. I grab both her hands, bring my face close, and I say, I love you, Vronky.
And she takes a step away, brings back her arm and her hand flies towards me. I catch her wrist just before it lands on my cheek, bewilderment flexing a thousand small muscles on my face. As I catch it, I feel her relaxing from her momentary fury. Relaxing, as she sees, as she sees, as she understands, that for once, and at last, I was doing it, against my nature, my principles and my habit and my life. I was doing it and I couldn’t help myself, I was out of control. So her slap turns into an embrace, as she realizes, and as she knows, that for once, that for once, that for once, I am telling The Truth…
Chapter Twenty-one: Punchline
… I think.
Tim Lott, White City Blue
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