It might have brought them closer together. It probably should have, but instead, Karen started bringing friends over with whom she’d abruptly stop talking whenever Amanda entered the room. And that, once more, was that.
The baffling thing was that she had no idea why. Her childhood had been perfectly normal, from what she could tell. She was still close to both George and Clare, despite the divorce, and there’d never been any undue worry about money or security. It just felt like she’d been born with a small flaw, right at the centre of herself, a flaw somehow too shameful to be shown to anyone else, so she’d spent her life building a carapace around it to keep it hidden. Inevitably, the carapace became her true self, a fact she could never quite see, a fact that might have offered relief. Because all she knew was the truth deep inside of her, the little something wrong no one else could ever, ever know. And if that wasn’t the real her, then what was? At her core, she was broken, and life was just one long attempt to distract people from noticing.
‘Are you having a good time, sweetheart?’ her father would ask in his every-other-day call.
‘Yes, Dad, Jesus,’ she would say to keep from crying.
‘Because everyone says your college years are your best years, but I have to confess, I found them sort of awkward and . . . Well, awkward actually about covers it.’
‘You find everything awkward, George,’ she’d said, bending at the waist to stop the sob rising in her throat.
He’d laughed. ‘I suppose so.’ Which was so upsetting somehow – his kindness, the pointlessness of it – that when he’d asked, ‘Are you sure you don’t need any more money?’, she’d had to hang up on him.
Rachel and Mei sat down, taking up five-sixths of the picnic blanket between them. It wasn’t quite warm enough for a picnic, really, but Rachel liked these sorts of gruelling challenges, wanting to see, Amanda thought, how much she could get her friends to put up with. If you complained, you lost.
‘So who’s looking after JP?’ Rachel asked, not taking off her coat.
‘My dad,’ Amanda said, looking through the basket and failing to find anything she liked to eat. She settled on a plastic tub of salad. ‘Is there dressing?’
Another pause, then another quiet, shared laugh between Mei and Rachel. Amanda ignored it and found, at least, a small, very expensive-looking bottle of olive oil. She poured it sparingly over the greens and the other greens and the various other greens besides those. She screwed the cap on too vigorously and felt it snap under her fingers. It now spun fruitlessly and refused to stay on. She carefully put it back into the picnic basket, setting the cap on it in a way that at least made it look closed, checking to be sure that neither Rachel nor Mei had seen.
‘My dad would never babysit,’ Rachel said, pouring a mug of coffee from an outrageously sleek thermos. ‘Never changed a nappy in his life? Didn’t bother learning our names until we were five?’
‘Oh, please,’ Mei said, surprising both Amanda and, it seemed, herself, before quickly re-shaping her face into one of cheerful acquiescence. Amanda didn’t dare hope for solidarity here; it was probably just how much Rachel liked to play up the Australian-ness of her father until he was practically roping cattle with his teeth while surfing and drinking a beer. Does he have that weird Australian pug nose? Amanda had never asked. Or the omnipresent layer of Australian male baby-fat? she’d never queried. Or a ponytail out of an inbred ’70s jug-band? she’d never wondered aloud. She checked herself internally. She was being grossly unfair. But wasn’t grossly unfair sometimes thrilling?
‘Dad’s great with JP,’ she said. ‘He’s very kind, is my father. Gentle.’
‘Mmm,’ Rachel didn’t quite say, looking across the field they’d chosen to some youths also taking advantage of the weather to kick around a football. ‘Jake Gyllenhaal’s younger brother, three o’clock.’
Mei blinked. ‘You know, I never know what you mean by that. You say “three o’clock” like it’s a direction.’
‘It is a direction?’ Rachel said, pointing. ‘Twelve, one, two, three o’clock? Not that difficult?’
They turned and looked at Mr Three O’Clock who, Amanda would never admit out loud, was indeed handsome, if a bit too young even for her, though possibly not for the six-years-older Rachel. His hair was as thick and luscious as a milkshake, and there was no way he didn’t know it. Even at this distance, he gave off self-regard like the Queen gave off forbearance.
‘He looks like he cries when he comes,’ Amanda said, not realising she’d said it out loud until she heard Mei snort with laughter. She turned, but Mei was already retreating again under Rachel’s glare. Mei quickly picked up her phone to keep tracking her daughter. ‘Still in Nando’s,’ she said.
‘Well, at least Marco takes an interest?’ Rachel said. ‘At least he’s not off with some hot new girlfriend in another country? Forgetting every bit of his duty?’
Amanda’s fork stopped halfway between the last bite of the salad and her mouth, momentarily so stung that swift tears filled her eyes. Blunt willpower alone kept them from spreading down her cheeks.
Because it wasn’t like that. Well, it was, but it also wasn’t. Henri was back in France and living with Claudine now but Amanda had basically forced him to go, booting him out of her and JP’s life with a force and constancy that had surprised even her. He called JP every week, though, even if JP’s four-year-old phone skills were barely rudimentary. Henri said he just wanted his son to hear real French, wanted him to hear his name (Jean-Pierre) pronounced properly, wanted him to hear the lullabies his own grandmother had sung to him.
If Amanda’s heart hadn’t ripped freshly in two every time she heard Henri’s voice, it might have even been sweet.
They’d met her last year at university, seeing each other first in a shared tutorial, then overlapping at the same parties. He was stocky, and manly to the point of bullheaded. His hair was going saltily grey even at twenty, and out of every girl in the tutorial, she was the one he sat by, seeing – he eventually told her – a kind of kindred intensity, like she’d not only be able to kill an enemy, but eat him, too.
For her part, she got so giddy every time he was in the same room that she began to live in a state of almost permanent fury. She’d refused to even tell her parents about him for months, lest there be any hint of laughter at her falling so hard, though they would of course have been the last people to do so.
She took most of it out on Henri. ‘You’ve got fire,’ he said, and though it sounded ludicrous even in a French accent, they’d each been so turned on it hardly mattered. It was like a hurricane courting a scorpion. Objects thrown, unbelievable sex, months lived in a kind of constant, shivering fever. It had all felt so young! It had all felt so French! She’d been swept away, but in hindsight only in the sense that a landslide brings down a highway: unstoppable catastrophe, followed by rubble. They’d even argued at their wedding. During the ceremony.
One month into their marriage, she discovered she was three months pregnant and immediately began finding even more fault with him. He didn’t separate the knives into steak versus regular. He piled his fag ends in the potted camellia she’d hung out on their new balcony in a flat he never finished renovating like he promised. And then, one night, during still-rather-amazing seven-months-pregnant make-up sex, he had looked so angry that she’d spontaneously slapped him across the face, hard enough for her wedding ring to cut his cheek, an action that shocked her so deeply she’d stayed at her father’s that night, frightened of what she was capable of doing next.
Henri left the next day. ‘It is not the slap,’ he said, maddeningly calm. ‘A Frenchman can take a slap, Lord knows. It is how your face looked when you did it.’ He took her arm with a gentleness that told her it was over more brutally than any fight ever could have. ‘You fight your hatred for yourself, anyone can see, and you do your best, taking it out on people who you think will be strong enough to handle it. I understand this. I am the same. It is hard but it is bearab
le if your love for me is bigger than your hate. But it has tipped somewhere along the way, and there is no recovery from that, I do not think. For either of us.’
The pain of this made her anger blaze anew, and she’d swept him away in a torrent of vengeful promises that he’d never see his son, that if he didn’t disappear, she’d tell a judge he slapped her – and what English judge wasn’t prepared to believe that about a Frenchman? – so he’d better leave the country altogether or she’d have him arrested.
He finally believed her. And left.
Yet when their son was born, she named him after Henri’s beloved late uncle, like they’d once discussed. She’d immediately shortened it to JP, but still. Even now, she spoke French to him as much as English to make sure he stayed fluent and could talk freely to his father.
Henri had been the love of her life, and she’d never be able to forgive him for it. Or herself, it seemed.
In the meantime, he called, and the sound of his voice made her sad enough to turn up the telly while he spoke, haltingly, to JP, who answered everything into the receiver with a very cautious, ‘Oui?’
‘Look,’ Amanda said, shoving her fork back into the salad container and swallowing the tears. ‘I’m sorry for what I said about the Animals In War thing. I’m sorry for swearing. I’m sorry for fucking everything, all right? There’s no need to dole out more punishment.’
Mei’s eyes seemed to genuinely fill with surprised concern, but Rachel stormed in first. ‘It’s not the Memorial?’ she said. ‘It’s more like your overall vehemence?’
Amanda, who’d expected – foolishly, it now seemed – to be greeted with fast assurances that she had nothing to apologise for, got irritated all over again. ‘My grandpa Joe lost a leg in Vietnam,’ she said. ‘And then got spat on by peaceniks when he came back in his wheelchair. So forgive me if I think a monument to a carrier pigeon is in bad taste.’
‘Whoa,’ Mei whispered. ‘Your grandfather fought in Vietnam?’
‘That can’t possibly be true,’ Rachel said, her voice growing harder.
Amanda froze. It wasn’t actually true. Grandpa Joe had never been drafted and had died on a worksite when a digger accidentally severed an artery in his thigh. She could just feel the bad karma piling up for pretending otherwise even for a moment. But needs must.
‘Did he kill any Vietnamese?’ Mei asked, suddenly serious in the way she always was when anyone within hearing distance might have been disrespecting any Asian of any kind.
Rachel tutted scornfully. ‘British soldiers didn’t actually fight in Vietnam? Australians bloody well did, though. My father–’
‘My grandfather was American,’ Amanda said, because that part was true.
Mei looked at Rachel. ‘Was he?’
‘On your mum’s side?’ Rachel said, looking perplexed, in a way that was perplexing to Amanda.
‘No, my dad,’ she said. ‘My dad’s American.’
‘No, he isn’t,’ Rachel laughed. ‘Your dad’s British? I’ve met him? Like more than once? You’re such a little liar, Amanda. It isn’t clever? And it isn’t funny?’
‘Excuse me,’ Amanda said. ‘I think I know the nationality of my own father.’
‘Whatever you say,’ Rachel said, taking a sip of her coffee.
‘Maybe you’re thinking of your stepfather,’ Mei said, obviously worried they were being too unkind.
‘My stepfather is also American,’ Amanda frowned. ‘My mother clearly has a type.’ This wasn’t true either. Hank was American, yes, but he was big, strapping and black. He couldn’t have been more different from George if George had been a woman. ‘My mother is British, but my father is definitely American.’
Rachel just raised her eyebrows and carried on looking at Mr Three O’Clock.
‘Ask his new girlfriend, if you don’t believe me,’ Amanda said, but quietly, because she’d given up.
‘New girlfriend?’ Rachel asked, surprisingly sharply.
‘He’s dating?’ Mei said, mouth open. ‘At his age?’
‘He’s forty-eight,’ Amanda said. ‘Hardly even out of range for either of you.’
‘Eew?’ Rachel said. ‘Don’t be gross?’ She flicked another olive out of her pasta. ‘So what’s she like then? Your new stepmother-to-be?’
Amanda wondered that herself. George had been even more unfocused this week than usual. He’d first called her with a story she couldn’t quite follow about a bird landing in his back garden and then flying away, a story she’d eventually convinced him must have been a dream, before suddenly announcing this morning that he’d been seeing a new woman who’d wandered into his shop. He’d sounded so open and vulnerable that the worry about what would inevitably happen – this was George, after all – made her a little bit sick.
‘Hardly a new stepmum,’ Amanda said. ‘It’s only been a few dates, and I haven’t even met her. All I know is she’s called Kumiko and–’
‘Kumiko?’ Rachel said. ‘What kind of name is that?’
‘Japanese,’ Mei said, eyes laser-like. ‘Very common name.’
‘I’m not sure about that, but from what he says, she seems really nice.’
‘If she puts up with your allegedly American father, she must be?’ Rachel said, draining the last of her wine.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Amanda asked, but only got to ‘What’s that–’ when the football thumped her in the back of the head so hard she practically went face down into the picnic basket.
‘Sorry,’ said Mr Three O’Clock, leaning in dynamically to retrieve the ball.
‘What the fuck?’ Amanda said, hand on the back of her head, but she stopped when she saw Rachel laughing in her most attractive way, boobs pushed up like an offering.
‘Don’t worry about it?’ Rachel said. ‘She deserved it for telling porky pies?’
Mr Three O’Clock laughed and brushed a lock of hair out of his eyes. ‘Is this picnic ladies-only or can any riffraff join?’
‘Riffraff would be an improvement?’ Rachel said. ‘Have some calamari? It’s Marks & Spencer’s?’
‘Don’t mind if I do,’ he said, sitting down roughly next to Amanda, knocking her Diet Coke into the grass. He didn’t apologise. Rachel was already dishing up a napkin of calamari for him.
Amanda was still holding the back of her head. ‘Olive oil?’ she asked, her voice flat.
‘Love some,’ he said, not even looking her in the face.
She carefully grabbed the bottle of oil and handed it to him, looking as innocent as she could manage. ‘Make sure you shake it first.’
He did.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Mei said.
To take his blade and cut into the pages of a book felt like such a taboo, such a transgression against everything he held dear, George still half-expected them to bleed every time he did it.
He loved physical books with the same avidity other people loved horses or wine or prog rock. He’d never really warmed to ebooks because they seemed to reduce a book to a computer file, and computer files were disposable things, things you never really owned. He had no emails from ten years ago but still owned every book he bought that year. Besides, what was more perfect an object than a book? The different rags of paper, smooth or rough under your fingers. The edge of the page pressed into your thumbprint as you turned a new chapter. The way your bookmark – fancy, modest, scrap paper, candy wrapper – moved through the width of it, marking your progress, a little further each time you folded it shut.
And how they looked on the walls! Lined up according to whatever whim. George’s whim was simple – by author, chronological within name – but over the years he’d also done it by size, subject matter, types of binding. All of them there on his shelves, too many, not enough, their stories raging within regardless of a reader: Dorothea Brooke forever making her confounding choice of husband, the rain of flowers forever marking Jose Arcadio Buendia’s funeral, Hal Incandenza forever playing Eschaton on the tennis courts of Enfield.
He had seen a story once about sand mandalas made by Tibetan Buddhist monks. Unbelievably gorgeous creations, sometimes just a metre across, sometimes big as a room. Different colours of sand, painstakingly blown in symmetrical patterns by monks using straw-like tubes, building layer upon layer, over the course of weeks, until it was finished. At which point, in keeping with Buddhist feelings about materialism, the mandala was destroyed, but George tended to ignore that part.
What was interesting to him was that the mandala was meant to be – unless he’d vastly misunderstood, which was also possible – a reflection of the internal state of the monk. The monk’s inner being, hopefully a peaceful one, laid out in beautiful, fragile form. The soul as a painting.
The books on George’s walls were his sand mandala. When they were all in their place, when he could run his hands over their spines, taking one off the shelf to read or re-read, they were the most serene reflection of his internal state. Or if perhaps not quite his internal state, then at least the internal state he would like to have had. Which was maybe all it was for the monks, too, come to think of it.
And so when he made his very first incision into the pages of a book, when he cut into an old paperback he’d found lying near the rubbish bins behind the shop, it felt like a blundering step into his mandala. A blasphemy. A desecration of the divine. Or, perhaps, a releasing of it.
Either way, it felt . . . interesting.
He’d never considered himself an artist, certainly didn’t consider himself one now, but he’d always been a half-decent drawer of things. He could sketch a face with some skill – less so the hands, but who besides John Singer Sargent could ever do hands? – and he’d even, for a period in college, made nude charcoal rubbings of Clare, lounging over a pillow or failing to hold steady the feathered headdress she’d found God knew where. These were usually precursors to sex, of course, though none the worse for that, and perhaps an emblem of their eventual marriage, as she misunderstood the sort of person he essentially was.