Alys, Always (19 page)

‘Unbelievable,’ I say, and I make myself shake my head, and then I put my hand on hers and give it a comforting squeeze. ‘How awful for you.’

‘Yes, it was,’ she says, gratefully. ‘It was horrid: it was such a shock, I’ve known him all my life, he’s my parents’ friend, and he’s Teddy’s
dad
, you know, and in any case he’s so
old
, and I thought he was still in mourning – and then
this
. Yuck! Anyway, I pushed him off, and obviously after that I had to get out of there.’

‘Does Teddy know?’ I ask.

‘Oh God, no. I thought I should keep it to myself. You won’t tell Polly, will you? I don’t want to cause either of them more upset.’ And when she says this, I know she knows it’s a lie, it’s a story she has invented to save face, and somehow I’m relieved by this insight. I’m relieved to know that there’s a limit to her capacity for self-delusion.

‘I think that’s very thoughtful of you,’ I say. ‘Maybe he’d had too much to drink. I’m sure it was a one-off.’

But no, Honor has more to tell. I can see the excitement shining in her eyes. The glee of being in possession of
valuable information. ‘Oh, Frances, that’s where you’re wrong,’ she breathes. ‘It turns out this is what he’s
like
. Affairs. Loads of them. All the way through his marriage.’

I raise my eyebrows and drink some of my coffee, and she goes on: ‘No, honestly – Miriam told me.’

Miriam, I remember distantly, is her mother. The taupe pioneer.

‘I came back to London and quite naturally I was in a bit of a state, and, well, I told my mother the whole story. It all came out. And then she told me that Laurence is kind of famous for going after younger women. He cheated on Alys. Lots of women. Most of them much younger than him. Mum even saw him out with one of them a few months before Alys died, at Malcolm Azaria’s. I don’t think they’d turned up together, but it was obviously prearranged. Mum said she saw them leaving in the same cab.’

This all sounds thoroughly inconclusive, and I’m about to dismiss it as worthless, when she says, ‘Maybe you know her through work. The woman he was with. Julia Price. She works in publishing.’

‘Rings a bell,’ I say. ‘Gosh. Really? What else did your mother say about her?’ I try not to sound too eager.

‘Well, Miriam thinks that he put a stop to it after, you know, the accident. Overcome with guilt. Jo Azaria told her so. And – God, this is top secret, I can’t believe I’m telling you, promise you won’t tell anyone – Jo heard it from Laurence himself: he just fell to pieces after Alys died and confessed a load of stuff. He didn’t talk about the other affairs, my mother assumes they were just small fry, but Julia Price – well, that one was the biggie, apparently. He admitted as much. After poor Alys died he felt so dreadful about the whole thing that he knocked it on the head. He said the relationship was worthless. It was
tainted
.’

I remember Julia white-faced in the hall after the memorial
service, the scene I half-witnessed in the square garden; and now everything is fitting together.

On reflection I feel fairly sure that Julia wasn’t the first betrayal. I imagine there were other girls over the years, girls who wrote poetry or did academic research and as a consequence were in thrall to the ruthlessness of the creative impulse; or maybe girls who worked in publicity and understood the need for discretion. Girls with bright eyes and dark flats, girls who asked nothing of him. People haven’t mentioned them but I expect they exist. The lack of any vaporous trail of speculation merely underlines Laurence’s position in this world, his ability to run rings around the gossips who spend their evenings moving between the tables where the books are arranged and the tables where the bar staff set out the glasses.

But Julia Price: well, the fact no one talked about
her
makes absolute sense.

‘You must feel you got off quite lightly,’ I say, and Honor says she does, she had no idea, it’s funny the stuff you don’t know about the people who have always been in your life. Her hand goes, as if for security, to the delicate chain around her neck. There, alongside the silver ‘H’, the other pendant spins and catches the light: the tiny horseshoe for good luck. ‘Teddy gave it to me ages ago,’ she says, noticing my interest. ‘It used to belong to his mother. Do you think I should give it back?’

‘Do you suppose Alys knew – about this Price person?’ I ask.

‘Oh, God, we hope not,’ she says. ‘She was lovely, wasn’t she? So kind. So
good
. But if you’re wondering whether Miriam said anything to her about seeing him go off with Julia Price after the party, no – she didn’t.’

I think back to what Polly told me about the last argument.

‘And you can change the dedication while you’re at it,’ Alys had said. ‘It’s not a tribute, it’s an insult.’

In the end, the dedication read, ‘For Alys. Always.’

Somehow, Alys found out about Julia. Maybe Jo Azaria told her after all.

Did he do what she wanted? Or did the dedication stand as originally written? I wonder whether I’ll ever know. I wonder why it matters to me.

Honor finishes her breakfast and flags down the waitress. We settle the bill, and then she says she has to buy some household essentials, so I walk around the shop with her, curious to see what qualifies. Vegan cheese. ‘Detox’ herbal tea. Washing-up liquid made with essential oils from organic Corsican lemons. We kiss goodbye on the pavement outside the shop, in the shade of a striped awning, and then she walks off, her jute bag over her arm, her flip-flops snick-snick-snicking over the pavement. Sunlight glitters off the line of traffic. The air smells of petrol. The sky is scored with the dissolving plumes of contrails.

Later I visit Naomi and her new baby, and we spend the afternoon aimlessly waving things at it and then aimlessly pushing it around the hot dusty streets of Shepherd’s Bush. After that I go alone to an early evening screening of the French movie Honor was so taken with: a movie about a good-looking Parisian couple with lovely clothes, great jobs and a dark secret. I enjoy it very much.

I catch the bus home and walk back skirting the locked park, passing thickets of shadowy parched vegetation held in check by iron railings. As I walk, I think I catch an airborne hint of something decaying in there.

I send Polly a few texts wondering how she is doing; and she replies, saying it’s not so bad being back at college, and she has been given a decent part in the autumn term play. She is meant to be coming over for dinner one Thursday but she blows me out at the last minute, texting at 5.30 to say she’s not feeling very well, and can we do it another time. Later that evening, after a solitary supper, I switch on my laptop and see she has tweeted from a bar in Westbourne Grove where she is celebrating Louisa’s birthday. Alexa Chung’s on the next table, apparently.

I try not to feel too irritated. I remind myself that I know what to expect from Polly, and it’s not very much. But what she offers, I will take.

I have a few things to work out but I try not to over-think them. If I over-think, events will feel rehearsed, and that would be no good at all. So I run through the possibilities, trying not to get snagged down by details. It’s a bit like making pastry. Light cool hands, no hurry, lots of air. Wait for the moment when the texture changes.

Work is going well. Gemma Coke does the interview with Julia Price, pegged to the new publishing venture, and it looks good in the paper: a photograph of Julia standing by the window in her office, the white flash in her hair drawing attention to her skin. There’s a breezy quote about her single/child-free status – ‘I probably wouldn’t have had the energy to do all this if I had gone down another route’ – as well as a reference to her popular reputation as ‘the most proposed-to woman in London’. She has entirely seduced Gemma, and as a result it’s rather a bland, forgettable piece.

Afterwards, she sends Mary an orchid in a glass bowl to say thank you.

When I stand in for Mary at morning conference, I find my
voice stays steady when I make my contributions. Tiny little Robin McAllfree says, ‘That’s a good point,’ when I comment, and he takes to popping over to Books occasionally, perching on the edge of my desk, swearing energetically and polishing his spectacles while talking about ‘you bloody bluestockings’. I assume it’s a sort of default flirting – he can’t help himself – and I laugh at his jokes politely and soon he goes off to bother someone else.

When Malcolm Azaria writes a memoir for a literary magazine about being contacted by a love child he’d known nothing about, McAllfree springs something on me the day the embargoed issue lands on his desk.

‘You’re muckers with old Azaria, aren’t you? Give him a ring and see if he’ll meet Gemma before the end of the week? Tell him we’d use it as the arts front. Nice big plug for whatever.’

‘Absolutely,’ I say, and when I get back to my desk I put in a call to the magazine’s publicist, who tells me he’s already done an interview with the
Sunday Times
to run this weekend, so it’s a no-go.

I email McAllfree to tell him Malcolm’s awfully sorry but he’s already committed elsewhere, and that’s the end of that. But now I know beyond doubt how Mary sold my promotion, and it reminds me – as if I were ever in danger of forgetting – to tread carefully.

The Indian summer is ending. It slopes off quite suddenly, without much fanfare, like a cad making a run for it. One morning I find myself grabbing my red and purple scarf as I leave the flat. One evening I walk out of the office and it’s almost dark.

When I stop off at the high-end deli to buy my lunch, I notice they’ve made an arrangement of pumpkins and gourds and paper leaves in the window, placed among flounces and twirls of orange and brown tissue.

I wait. Sometimes I’m patient, content to wait; and sometimes I wonder – fretfully or desperately, depending on my mood – whether it will ever happen. It’s out of my hands now, though. I’ve done what I can, and one day the opportunity will present itself. I’m almost certain it will.

Ambrose Pritchett has contributed to
The Road Less Travelled
, a book in which literary types celebrate the hidden charms of their favourite British counties. Pritchett’s essay is on Worcestershire.

‘Oh, I had no idea that’s where you’re from,’ I say when he comes into the office to pick up his post.

‘Gracious, Frances, I’m from Egham. Worcestershire was the only one left.’ He’d never been there before accepting the commission and, he tells me, he has no plans to go back in a hurry. Most of his information came from the internet and an old AA guide.

The launch party is being held upstairs at the Meat Safe, a Soho restaurant specialising in the sort of British food – pigs’ cheeks, brawn, chard, whelks, posset – that manages to sound utterly horrid on the menu. I accept the invitation because you never quite know who’s going to turn up to these things; you never can tell. But when I arrive, I see it’s just another party, like all the others.

I’ve had one damson cocktail (more than enough) and am on the point of waving my fingers at Ambrose to say, ‘See you, I’m off,’ when the atmosphere of the room changes, as if someone has dimmed the lighting, or turned it up slightly.

‘Oh, look who’s here,’ murmurs a voice behind me.

I turn to the door to see whom they’re talking about. It’s Laurence. The girl from the publishing house is trying to take his coat but he’s resisting, smilingly pressing past her, saying, ‘I can’t stay, I won’t be a minute,’ and then he’s
entering the room, embracing Nikolai Titov, here to support his wife Peggy, who has written the chapter on Somerset. A man with a camera steps forward to take their picture. Obligingly Laurence pauses, his arm around Peggy, showing his teeth, until the photographer backs off, thanking him.

‘I was passing – I can’t stay – but I wanted to say hello,’ I hear him say as he stoops to kiss her on both cheeks.

I stand at the side of the room, waiting, waiting, willing him to turn and notice me.

When he does, I meet his gaze, and I feel the satisfaction of seeing his expression alter.

I hold myself very still, in the unnerving sharpness of his scrutiny. I let him look. It’s only for a tiny moment, a second, less than a second, but in that time I feel that many things change. And then he nods at me, quite casually, not quite smiling, and glances away.

He has a few more words with the Titovs and then he excuses himself and makes his way through the crowd towards me, murmuring apologies to people who step aside to let him pass, people who can’t help peering after him to see whether they know me.

This is the third kiss and it’s a quick, familiar, easy one. Briefly I feel the warmth of his cheek against mine and his hand on my sleeve, the light pressure of his palm through the fabric.

‘How are you?’ he’s saying, and I say, ‘Fine … Oh, it’s been a long time since Biddenbrooke,’ and then he says, ‘I’ve only got a few moments, the cab’s outside; Polly’s cooking me supper – she’s staying the night.’

‘I don’t suppose you could drop me home on the way?’ I ask.

He says that would be fine, he’ll just go and say goodbye to the Titovs and he’ll see me outside.

It’s no big deal. I shake hands with a few people and
collect my coat from the rack in the corridor and then, carefully, I descend the stairs. There’s a mirror at the bottom of the staircase and as I pass I catch my eye. I look quite unlike myself, I think, almost shocked by the sight. The woman in the glass, with her bright eyes and flushed cheeks, looks like someone to whom things might happen: interesting things, exciting things, even dangerous things.

The cab is idling outside, its windows glittering with raindrops. Laurence leans forward from its depths to open the door and I step over a puddle slick with neon and slide in next to him.

‘Highgate,’ he says. ‘But via – where exactly do you live, Frances?’

I give the address to the driver, and the cab moves off into the sparkling night.

He asks me about the party, and I tell him what Ambrose Pritchett said to me, and he laughs, which makes me feel good.

Then I raise the subject of his work and he says, cautiously, that he thinks it’s going well. He seems to be making progress. ‘It’s a very different experience this time,’ he adds, as the cab stops and starts through Camden Town. ‘My wife, Alys, was always my first reader. She had a very good eye.’ I think it’s the first time he’s spoken to me about her.