Dancing in the Dark (7 page)

‘So not an atom of truth in their allegations of hanky-panky,' says Charlie.

‘An atom, maybe. No more than that. Look, can we change the subject?' Fergus looks round.

‘Come into the kitchen.'

Ah God, that kitchen. Cream-coloured Aga, Welsh dresser crowded with pretty pieces of china, double sink, magnet-cutesy fridge door covered with kiddy-art. Something to aspire to, or something to shun? Fergus the Aganaut. A terrible beauty . . .

‘Charles, don't you think Fergus is looking a bit seedy?' Carolyn asks.

Charlie, busy with bottles, blundering round the kitchen like a balding bear, considers his friend. ‘I've certainly seen him look better.'

‘Something must be done,' says his wife.

Charlie sighs. ‘What kind of a something do we have to do?'

‘Fergus here needs a stabilizing influence. We have to marry him off. For his own sake as much as for all those betrayed women,' Carolyn says, the bit between her teeth, his future assured in her capable hands. ‘I mean, just look at him.'

Fergus lifts his shoulders. ‘I'm probably constipated.'

‘Constipation of the heart rather than the bowels, if you ask me,' Carolyn says.

‘Wouldn't it be easier to prescribe me a paregoric or send me on a nice bracing visit to the seaside? Getting married seems a little drastic.'

‘Drastic measures are what's called for.'

‘Got someone in mind, Caro?' asks Charlie, filling three glasses and handing them round.

‘I was thinking that there might be someone coming this afternoon who would be just right for him.'

‘Who?'

‘I don't know, but . . .'

‘Why should there be?' asks Fergus. ‘How easy is it for two totally random entities to meet in the right place at the right time?'

‘Isn't that a definition of falling in love?'

‘Man exists in an eternity of single atoms spinning out of the void and eventually disappearing back into it. There's no guarantee he'll ever connect to any of the other similarly spinning atoms around him.'

‘Maybe today you'll get lucky and bump into another atom.' Carolyn leans forward with a brilliant smile. ‘
I
know! Theo Cairns!'

‘Theo? The anal retentive?' says Charlie.

‘If you wish to be so insensitive about someone who's practically family, well, yes.'

Charlie pulls a face. ‘You know I love her dearly. She's like my second sister. But you've got to admit she's kind of –' He waves his hands in the air as though hoping the right word will fly into them – ‘
edgy
. Would I wish her on my friend Fergus, the freest spirit of them all?'

‘She might be exactly what he needs.'

‘You could be right,' Charlie says thoughtfully. ‘Trouble is, she's carrying an awful lot of baggage.'

‘Aren't we all?'

‘Well, no, actually. Not us. Your family, my family? Not a lot of baggage there – unless you mean the expensive Louis Vuitton kind.'

‘Fergus's got baggage, too.'

‘That's what I mean. Between him and Theo, there's so much baggage they'd never be able to lift it off the ground.'

‘Hell-
oh-
o.' Fergus taps the side of his glass. ‘Anyone home?'

The two of them stare at him as though they're not sure who he is. ‘What?'

‘First of all, who says I need a stabilizing influence?'

‘I do.' Carolyn reaches up and adjusts the complicated mechanism holding her smooth blonde hair in its French twist.

‘Secondly,' says Fergus, ‘over the many delightful years that I've been privileged to enjoy your friendship, you have placed before me a pot-pourri, a farrago, a veritable gallimaufry of girls so totally undesirable that a weaker man than myself might have been driven to the brink of suicide.'

‘Nonsense,' Charlie says. ‘What about—'

Fergus interrupts him with a raised hand. ‘And thirdly, can I state categorically that despite disastrous appearances to the contrary, I am more than capable of finding my own women friends.' He looks from husband to wife. ‘When you speak of Theo, do you mean that friend of Jenny's who I met here at one of your parties several years ago?'

‘That's right.'

‘When I say she's uptight, don't get me wrong,' Charlie says. ‘She's a very . . . interesting woman.'

‘Exactly,' says Caro. ‘Fergus needs someone intelligent, complex, feisty. Theo's all of those. And pretty, besides.'

‘But is she really what he's looking for?'

Fergus leans back against the dresser. In the distance they hear the sound of little boys thundering down the stairs, calling his name. ‘How the fuck do either of you know what I'm looking for?'

‘Because I know
so
much better than you do who's right for you,' says Charlie. ‘And because I'm a psychologist.'

‘And because we love you,' adds Caro, sweetly.

‘I really appreciate your concern, but I'll select my own mate, if you don't mind.'

‘Be like that.' Carolyn smiles at him as her sons burst into the room.

Later, when he is left alone while Caro and Charlie occupy themselves with last-minute preparations for their lunch party, he finds himself thinking about the once-met Theodora Cairns. She had dimples, if he remembers correctly. And extraordinary eyes, the colour of pewter or of deep-packed ice, the colour of smoke, with the blackest eyelashes. Eyes that yearned. Eyes that begged not to be rejected. Smoke gets in your eyes. Makes you weep. Baggage, Charlie said. He dimly remembers something about the mother – a singer? A dancer? – who'd abandoned her when she was a child.

He walks out into the garden. White-clothed tables laden with glasses and open bottles wait beneath a leafy walnut tree. Something is being barbecued. Caro's garden gleams green and gold. Has she thwacked the nail on the head? Is that what's wrong, is it time he settled down? Trouble is, he hasn't yet found the elusive Ms Right, even though he knows that the woman he hopes for does exist somewhere, she
must
exist, even if it's on another planet, in another country, a different century, an alternative life. So where is she, why is she not banging on his door? He's thirty-nine and so far has never met a woman he could imagine in his future. And what are the chances of colliding with her at Caro Cartwright's luncheon party?

He pours himself another glass of wine. Remembers the unforgettable vacation he'd spent in Corfu years ago with Charlie, at the Cartwright family's villa. Part of an unforgettable year. His first book published. Money, for the first time in his life. Freedom. A loosening of the chains which bound him to Dublin. Knowing that he had finally kissed the past goodbye. Or so he hoped.

Every day he'd got up at five and worked until the household came to life. He'd written there, fingers flying across the keys of the typewriter he'd carted out from England, desperate to keep up with the glossy thoughts oozing from him like some rich oil. Corfu had pulled the words out of him, unrolled them like scarves, like banners, thick as paint impasto'ed on to the page. His limbs hung loosely from his body, his hair shone, he grew two, four, six feet in the short time he was there.

The days rolled into each other. After breakfast, he and Charlie would swim, or take a boat out to rock on the motionless water and look down at the ribbed sea-sand below. They climbed the rocky iris-scattered hills behind the house, carrying olives and figs, coarse bread, bunches of yellow grapes. Sheep bells plunked among the rocks. Eagles soared above the crags, while the sunshine soaked through the top of his skull and trickled down into the hollows and interstices of his bones. As dusk fell, sea and sky merged and became a single velvety black.

Occasionally he'd left the others and gone in to light a candle, remembrance of things long past, thank God, sniff the familiar smells of incense and damp, kneel for a moment and let himself be transported into anonymity. When Charlie left to meet up with Carolyn in St Jean de Luz, Fergus stayed on. The heat grew. Albania shimmered on the horizon; at night they could see firelight on the hills across the water. Max Cartwright, Charlie's father, took him out in a boat one night and they fished by the light of an oil lamp, watched the octopuses squeezing themselves through the translucent water, like beating hearts, or drifted through the night-black ocean, trailing green fire from their fingertips. Iris and asphodel springing from the bare earth, the crippled mandolinist under a tree with a voice like a bird and everywhere, the sharp smell of salt and sage.

By now, thinks Fergus, the island has probably turned into some Blackpooled nightmare of beer bellies and chips, heavy metal thumping from café doorways, karaoke bars and fake Oirish pubs, hideous apartment buildings backing up the hillsides, Corfu concretized.

The doorbell rings. He hears the high, excited voices of people prepared to enjoy themselves. Anticipation sparks through his blood. Maybe, this time, Caro and Charlie will be right and this Theo Cairns will have transmuted into the woman he desires in his dreams. What he would never have admitted to either of them is the extent of the isolation he feels, the increasing difficulty he has in pretending to both himself and to others that he enjoys the solitary life. His simple lack of happiness.

If he could only recapture the effortless creativity he'd known back then in Corfu. Perhaps the possibility of going back was worth looking into. If nothing else, it would get him out of London, away from the bastards of the press, the sniggers. Wherever he went, he'd carry the ghost of Brendan with him, of course, but maybe he'd finally be able to bury him there, by the citron sea. And he might find that he could write again with the same passion and intensity he'd written that summer.

‘Yes,' he says now, aloud, under the walnut tree as the doorbell rings again, drawing in a breath, preparing to be sociable, to meet the knowing glances and whispered asides of those who read the tabloids. ‘I should go back.'

‘Y
ou don't remember me, do you?'

He's right. In fact, I've never seen him before in my life. Or have I? Now I look more closely, he is definitely familiar in a distanced kind of way. More than familiar. Is he someone famous? Was he on – God no, surely I'd remember! – one of those TV gardening programmes with me? ‘Uh . . . of course I do.'

‘Caro told me you would be here,' he continues.

I suddenly realize what this is: a clumsy Cartwright attempt to get me off with some totally unsuitable no-hoper. Though, to be fair, as no-hopers go, this one isn't bad looking. ‘Ah,' I say, still trawling my memory.

‘I've been looking forward to seeing you again.'

Again? Where did we meet before? I register an Irish accent, one eyebrow slightly higher than the other, blue eyes that tilt at the corners, and a shock of hair even darker than my own, albeit flecked with white. He's what, middle thirties? Is he an actor, a TV person? Have I read about him somewhere?

‘So,' he continues, ‘I'm disappointed that you obviously have no recollection of me.'

‘Uh . . .'

The higher of his eyebrows flutters briefly. ‘I'm Fergus—'

‘Fergus Costello!' I say. ‘Of
course
I remember you.' Though in truth, I have no more than a trace memory of him standing here, under this same walnut tree. And then I remember reading about him in the papers. Fergus Costello. It's not a common name; I should have made the connection between the cheating lover and the man I'd met years ago. I can't recall the exact details, but they involved other men's wives, country estates, lurid tales of his sexual prowess. Ten times a night, that had certainly been mentioned. Maybe it's just juicy silly-season scandal, but it still makes him either mad, bad or dangerous. Just the sort of thing I'm
really
looking for. I step back, eyeing the crowd for someone a bit less of all three.

I see Max and Terry Cartwright over by the lily-pond. ‘I must go and say hello to Jenny's parents. It's been really nice to meet you again, Fergus. Maybe one of these days we can . . .' I smile, give him a little wave and move off.

‘Theo!' Terry inclines her cheek for my kiss. ‘How lovely to see you.'

‘And you, darling Terry.'

‘You're looking much too thin, honey. Are you all right?'

‘Of course. Are
you
?'

‘I guess so.' Her cheerful face droops for a moment. Earlier in the year, her mother had died, loved and missed by all. ‘I've just got up the courage to start clearing out Nancy's closets, and if you know anyone who takes size-three shoes, I'd be happy to pass them on.'

Nancy Halloran was Surrey's answer to Imelda Marcos, owner of a custom-built shoe-closet that held up to four hundred pairs at any one time.

I look down at my own size sixes. ‘Can't help, I'm afraid.'

‘I can't bear to throw out all those lovely handmade shoes.'

‘If I hear of any shoeless midgets, I'll be sure to let them know.'

Terry and Max are –
were
, when I needed such things – my guardians, appointed by my mother when she sent me off to boarding school. Terry had been her closest friend since their own childhood in Canterbury. I love the Cartwrights as though they were my own parents which, in many respects, they are.

‘How was your trip?' Max asks.

‘Great. Very successful.'

‘You've done really well,' he says. ‘Getting the business off the ground the way you have.'

‘There's still a long way to go,' I say.

‘Your mother's so proud of you,' Terry puts in. ‘She phoned last week. She's in Sweden at the moment.'

‘I know. Someone sent me an invitation.'

‘I expect you'll get together when she's in London next week.'