Homesick (17 page)

The hotel is the same as last year and the year before. I’ve come to three of these, one
before
everyone died and
two since. I like these things: I like to watch. I especially like it if people get pissed and behave badly. I like to watch the bosses smiling and scheming. This is the first time I brought someone, and I like to look at people being encouraging, and their faces, their faces—because I’m nearly forty-three, and Bunny is young (he says twenty-six, but he’s probably twenty-three) and he’s black, which is neither here nor there, because everyone’s black deep down inside, everyone’s got something about them that other people notice first. Black is just skin, but if you’re Irish, someone’ll say to your face, “So you’re Irish,” like it’s a discovery. Like people say, “So, you’re married?” and I say, “No, a widow,” and they say, “Do you have children?” and I say—often with a curt little laugh, a winning smile sometimes—“No, they’re dead, too,” and it’s fine because sometimes, when I’m feeling charitable, I explain, and sometimes, when I’m not, I slug back a vodka and reel about on my heels, feeling the waft of moral high ground about my ankles. When I totter, when I fall, when I’m drunk again (in mitigation, it happens less frequently now that Bunny’s on the scene), I still feel that punchy, frozen air about me as I fall through it, as I fall.

The Grey Hair keeps staring. I slug back the champagne. Gareth from sales, charming guy, stands squarely, suddenly, in my face. “All right, Clare?” he asks.

“Ooh, yes, Gareth,” I say, because I like a flirt with Gareth. He has that sort of stocky body that seems to be made of gunmetal. The sort of musculature suited to silk.

“Pacing yourself, are you, darling?” he says.

“Darling?” I say, startled. Grey Hair has turned away. I see he is a little hunched. “Why ‘darling’?” I drawl.

“No need to get all feminist,
darling
,” he says, and a girl titters at his elbow.

“Oh, not
feminist
, Gareth. Be careful what you start, though,” I say and move a little forward, adjusting my weight so, the cleavage taking centre stage. Purple silk gown, like God, present in its absence; my body, present in its intimation—my body, always present, always real, always—and oh, of course he notices.

“Steady,” he says, like a jockey—like a jockey already harnessed.

Bunny has wandered. I watch him, at this
thing
, this ironic
xmas fest
, and I wonder how he can be with
me
with all these other gypsy girls, their curly hair and falling bustiers displayed toward him, and I think it is inevitable that he will leave—and
no
, it’s not anything to do with (
everyone dying
), though of course the bereavement counsellor would say that it has
everything
to do with that. I’m no fucking Holly Golightly, I think. I’m no flibbertigibbet, smoking with a holder, wearing kooky numbers, playing the guitar type girl. I’m a woman. With a 36D bust that needs to be handled expertly at times. Bunny does that, and then I don’t need him, because simply: love is over, love is past.

And there he is, old Bunny, little Bunny, Buns-a-go-go, charming that gorgeous girl who sat crying with me the day I came back, sat there saying “devastating” and “blah blah”—I call it “blah blah” because those words are just words, words blah. And turns out she was crying because the guy, the
one—
you know, the one who is the inevitability, whose sperm will meet your egg, the one whose chemicals will turn your life into more life—he just upped and left, going blah fucking blah on her everything, just like the (
everyone dying
) thing.

He is so casually, brilliantly flirtatious. He is a triumph, my Bunny, placing his hand above her head on the pillar she’s leaning against. Gareth is moving away, and I am sipping
my drink and watching Bunny, and Gareth, I think, may have tried to pinch my arse, because the tittering girl has looked behind her in an annoyed way, and I see my reflection in her face, I see my full worth there: she’s thinking “over the hill”—she’s thinking—bitch with feelings, she’s thinking “devastating”—and I raise my glass to her and turn away.

We’re at this
thing
, and again the feeling of rootedness. It comes when I’m not in the middle of it all, when I’m on the sidelines and I’m sober or semisober, I suddenly feel how a tree feels. I suddenly feel—oh, shit, I can’t move—and I try, but my feet are just there, solid, lumpen rocks. Move forward, I tell them, and they do not. Stay still, then, I say, and look about to find some help—would it be ridiculous to seek help? This time, at this
thing
, I am more canny. I lift my empty glass to a waiter, I look him in the eye, and he moves forward with the champagne, filling the glass, flirting with his eyes. Would I? Of course, I think I’d have him against the pillar now—be easy enough. There’s no underwear. And if it made a baby, at least there’d be a baby, and I contemplate the whole making-of-a-baby process, but in front of the boss, in front of the boss’s wife, in front of my secretary, Ann, and the myriad others in this rainbow
thing
, all watching me fuck a waiter against a pillar, against the pillar Bunny leans against on the other side. I laugh when I think of my face, the face Bunny complains about, the face that thinks of fucking but is dead. The face that cannot lie in the dark, the one Bunny kisses and kisses when it cries, this dead face, the one that died when
everyone died
.

Grey Hair is suddenly here.

“Hello,” he says.

“Hello,” I reply. “Have we met?” I want to be kind to him. He is still hunched.

“Yes, Clare. A long time ago, we were … friends.”

No, no. I do not want to know about a long time ago. “Ah,” I say. Is it one of those times when I can say,
Everyone died
, you know?

“I was at Teddy Hall with—”

“Yes.” He was at the same college as Rob. That’s all. Someone will have told him already, which is why he has been hesitant. I must remember to take for granted people’s need to inform.

“You were at?”

“Somerville.”

“Yes. That’s right. I remember. I remember you well.”

“I wish I could say the same,” I say, and I’m trying not to be angsty or rude, but am I? I question whether I really know what I’m trying for. Everything is out of my hands, everything is inevitably lost in that mist of death, that thing they call bereavement, where people are secretly alive and you hear children’s voices in the house when you wake, you hear their laughter. Decisions are over there. The way you decide to say something, the way you play with words, or your glass or your hair or the way your toes shift or the way you fuck Bunny, it’s all decided in that moment, that moment before you quite wake up, where you see the bulk next to you, and you put your hand on Bunny’s back and think it’s Rob—but, silly, Rob never stayed in bed longer than you, so who is this, and you open your eyes, and beautiful Bunny face is there, his eyes shut like a child’s, like a daughter’s—all over there, the way you choose to smile.

“I’m Gwyn. I was Andy’s friend.” Andy was our best man. I remember Gwyn and Andy, likely lads, lots of girlfriends, taking the piss out of Rob because he loved me and I loved him and we didn’t hide being in love but adored each other and spent days in bed worshipping each other.

“Oh, Gwyn. I remember now.” And I do remember now, which is a shame, because I might cry, and I never cry. I never cry in front of people I work with. I never cry at all, hardly, except maybe with Bunny, and even then it’s when I’m half asleep, so it’s my brain doing it. Brave face, brave face, I say. Say the thing you say. “You know
everyone died
,” I say.

Strangely, he pulls his shoulders back. He stands up taller. “Yes.” He smiles. “I know.” He sips at his glass, and I sip at mine. He moves sideways and stands next to me to let a waiter pass. I like this man a little, because he stands shoulder to shoulder with me yet says nothing, as if we are facing off against the world, just for these few minutes. “I was watching you,” he says.

“Yes, I saw you watching me. Was it because you remembered me?”

“Yes. But something more,” he says, and we are separated by a party of girls conga-ing toward the dance floor. The room is darkening, and the disco lights begin their sweeping search. He comes back. “Something more.” He smiles.

We’re at this
thing
, you see, and he tells me of me. He says: “D’you remember that summer ball when Rob was in halls and the rest of us weren’t? D’you remember that way we used to all say we need a sitting-out room, where we leave our coats and where we can come back if we need to sit down or take a girl? And Rob said we could use his room?”

“Were Rob and I together—”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Of course …,” he says, and he puts his drink down, guides my elbow so we stand nearer the door to the garden. It is quieter, although the bar is
here, but only quiet voices. Bunny is forgotten. I don’t want Bunny, I don’t know Bunny. I want this voice; I want Gwyn to keep talking. “Do you remember Andy and I came first, and you were getting changed. You were in an emerald green dress, and Andy said you looked like a leprechaun?”

I laugh. “Bloody Andy.”

“Bloody Andy,” he agrees, and I see he is weighing words, balancing one against the other.

“What?” I say.

“Bloody Andy. You looked just near enough to fucking perfect anyone has ever looked, before or since.” I am silenced. He is silent.

“Gwyn,” I say. He smiles. I try to change the subject. “Are you married?”

He laughs. “No, this isn’t one of those ‘I fell in love with you and have been hunting you down ever since and here you are’ stories.” And I laugh now. “But I did fall in love. In Oxford, everyone was in love with everyone else. We were all in love with each other, so I thought it no different. Oh, what the hell. It’s only when I saw you, just now, that I realised that actually, well, you—in that dress—that
that
could have been one of those times … you know—
those times
.” And when he says it like that, I lean to him, as if he had dragged me there. I lean my chest onto his and I kiss him. He is surprised. He doesn’t back away, and his kiss back is clumsy and mistaken.

“I’m sorry, but I haven’t known—I mean, I haven’t felt,” I say, and he takes my elbow again and we are in the garden. It is a clear night, cold, moonless, black. He takes his jacket off. “Little Gwyn,” I say.

“Little?” He is incredulous. “I’m six foot,” he says, his Welsh accent only now coming through.

“Yes, but the other Gwyn was a prop forward or something, wasn’t he?”

“Yes.” We sit on a bench, and he puts the jacket around me. “How are you?” he asks.

“What, now? Or generally?”

“Whichever.”

“Oh. I don’t really answer that, usually. Only if my therapist asks. Let’s see. I’m … starved,” I say, and I mean it. He goes to stand.

“I’ll get you something,” he says.

“No, I mean: I feel hungry for
everything
. Life. Love. Sex. I’m desperate for
sex
.”

“But—what about …”

“Bunny? Yes, we have
sex
, but I mean, I want to have sex in my
head
, the way it was when I was married for twenty years—
that
sex. Are you married? Do you know what I mean?”

“No. I’m not married. Never wanted to be. I live alone. I have girlfriends. I remember my parents locking the door on Saturday afternoons. Every Saturday afternoon. I always wondered what that must have been like.”

“It’s comfort and joy.”

We sit there for an hour or more, talking and not talking, and then his hand is on my thigh. I think, I like his hand on my thigh. Perhaps it will go higher. And it does, and he takes my hand and puts it onto his crotch, the hardness there, and in the dark, Gwyn could be Rob, and yes, in the dark, we put the jacket down and I lift my skirts, and in the dark, my face changes, because in the dark, there is the love, in my head, there is Rob and Gwyn mixed together, and my face smiles as he kisses my breasts, and my face smiles as he comes.

We’re at this
thing
, I think. We’re here, and we’ve fucked,
and I feel the wetness, take his handkerchief to wipe it away, and I hear Bunny calling, and my hair is down.

“Do you remember,” he says, “the day after the ball?”

“No,” I say. But suddenly I do.

After the ball, a June day slipped through our window—

Bunny shouts, “Clare!”

And the windows were wide open, and I woke to the noises of scaffolding thrown down, the packing-away of a marquee. Rob lying next to me in his single bed. We took our clothes off? No, we lay down on the bed, tired and drunk, and pulled the leftover coats over us, but as the sun had invaded the high ceiling, we had warmed and toasted, and I had pushed the coats from me and woken muzzily into sunshine on my face, on my neck, on my breasts. I woke, and now I remember—

“Oh, Clare,” Bunny says as he sees Gwyn. And I hold him closer, our diagonal bodies pull toward each other to deflect him—

I woke and Gwyn was there, and I lay next to Rob, naked, and he stood there.

“I’ve come for my coat,” he said.

“OK,” I said, and lay still, then reached down to pull my dress back up.

“Don’t,” he whispered. I was embarrassed, ashamed. “Go away, Gwyn,” I said.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. Rob was drunk, heavily asleep. Gwyn did not leave but looked at me still.

“Do you remember what I said?” Gwyn asks.

He stepped closer. “Clare,” he whispered.

“You said, ‘I think I’m in love with you,’ ” and I feel Gwyn’s smile in the dark against my shoulder.

“Do you remember what you said?”

“No,” I say, because I don’t want to remember.

“You said, ‘In a different life, Gwyn,’ ” and I pull myself away.

That June day I was angry: I hated his eyes, hated that he had eaten me with those eyes. But when the
thing
starts to break up, we go home together. In the morning I wake to an empty bed—but he is there, watching, waiting, and I scoop him back: I hold him, for the comfort, for the joy.