Love Is a Four Letter Word (9 page)

‘No, no, no, no, and no.'

‘I'll take that as a no then?' Bella said.

Something gave her the feeling that Viv wasn't mad keen on the idea of going to a poetry reading.

Viv claimed to be allergic to poetry ever since an unfortunate experience at school when she had fallen asleep – her chin suddenly hitting the desk with a loud thunk – while the unfortunately named Mrs Doring was reading them ‘The Lady of Shalott', raising up on her toes to emphasize the poetic meter as if she were mounted on a bouncy spring.

‘But it's not
poetry
poetry, Viv, not wandered-lonely-as-a-cloud wafty stuff. She's really funny. Some of it's rude. You'd love it.'

‘Can't be done, babe. Friday's our takeaway and video night.'

‘But this is Culture,' Bella said. ‘You remember Culture. You had some once, about four years ago.'

Viv remained immovable. All couples have a regular evening together when they sit glued to a movie, chomping their way through chicken chow mein and beef in black bean sauce or Special Set Meal No. 2; it was a Universal Law, like gravity or e=mc2, not to be questioned. Patrick, poking through a drawer, ‘Where's the wonky list gone again, Bel?' The menu of the Wong
Kei. ‘Why do you need it? We always have the same thing: 5, 8, 27, 41, 63, 66. Free prawn crackers.' Jeez, she could still remember the numbers, a code inscribed in her memory like the combination of a safe. How long before she could forget them?

‘You're very sad. Anyone would think you were joined at the hip. No, no, don't try to protest. I'm going to get you two matching anoraks next Christmas. Orange, with
cheeky
foldaway hoods.'

‘You should go anyway,' Viv said. ‘There might be some nice men there.'

‘Right. What kind of man goes to a poetry reading?'

‘You're beyond help. Well, don't blame me if you never find –' she made a melodramatic bad-horror-movie noise ‘– The One.'

The One. The magical, perfect fantasy Mr Right that every woman knows is Out There, somewhere, struggling on through his lonely existence, because he hasn't yet found Her, his fantasy woman, his The One. Rationally, Bella reminded herself that life didn't work like that; of course there would be many hundreds, maybe even thousands, of men in the world that would be a good match for any one woman. Most you would never meet but that should still leave you with many, many opportunities to have a perfectly nice life with a perfectly nice somebody. But what if there really were only The One, the ideal person who was supposed to be with you? You might miss your bus one morning and he could be on it, single and ready to meet you and you would never even know how close you had been. Or you might glimpse him across a room, your eyes would meet for a moment and you'd wonder ‘What if?' Someone else might have got to him first, be stifling
your
person in a dead-end, loveless marriage. Even now, this very minute, your very own Mr Right could be cavorting with another woman, the unfaithful
bastard, ignoring the niggling thought fluttering in his mind like a moth, struggling to be noticed, that something vital was missing from his life. If you did ever chance to find each other, The One would, of course, recognize your true loveliness and be blind to your sticking-out stomach and chubby arms.

She would go on her own. Why not? She was an independent woman, an elective spinster as she had once heard someone say. How much better it was to have a diversity of interests, to be going to a poetry reading rather than sitting slumped on the sofa watching telly, your biggest concern whether to stick with the familiar, No. 63 Chicken with Chinese Mushrooms, or live dangerously and go for No. 67 Chicken and Cashew Nuts.

Most of the seats were already taken by the time Bella arrived at the poetry reading, having extricated herself with difficulty from a conversation with Seline about the prospect of going into partnership as things were going so well. Bella hoped to defer the moment of actually Making a Decision for as long as possible. Or longer. She didn't know what she wanted, other than not to have to decide. She helped herself to a glass of wine and covertly peered over the rim in quest of any lone, attractive men. It would be considerate if they could carry a small sign or wear a lapel badge: ‘Available' or ‘Married but looking for a leg-over' or ‘In relationship but keeping my options open'.

There was quite a crowd. The last time she'd gone to a poetry reading, there had been only two other people aside from herself and what she concluded must be the poet's family and immediate hangers-on. She'd felt obliged to exaggerate her appreciation to compensate for the lack of audience and spent the whole time nodding and brow-furrowing in an elaborate mime of
gosh-how-profound-how-sensitively-attuned-I-feel-so-deeply-privileged-to-hear-these-soul-enriching-words. The poet's entourage had openly stared at her at the end of each poem to check that her reaction was sufficiently intense. Why was she trying to meet their expectations? she'd wondered. Wasn't it the poet who was supposed to be doing the performing?

She settled by a table piled with Nell Calder's books, and looked around for somewhere to rest her glass. There was an empty corner on a table nearby – she reached for it at exactly the same moment as someone else. Their glasses clashed.

‘Oh, sorry,' they said in unison.

‘Er, cheers then.' The man smiled, looking directly into her eyes. Nice face, but how rude, she thought. Unnerved, she looked away quickly. She didn't want to give him the wrong idea. His hair could do with a bit of a brush. It was strangely springy, sticking up at odd angles here and there. She peered at him sideways. He caught her at it and smiled.

There was an amplified whoompf and whine as the microphone was wrestled from its stand at the front.

‘Oh, hello, signs of action, I think,' said the springy-haired man at her side, stretching to see over a woman wearing a peculiar patchwork hat with a ludicrously high crown.

‘Do you think she's got planning permission for that hat?' he whispered to Bella, indicating the woman with a nod. ‘This is a conservation area.' Mid-swallow, Bella laughed, spraying her wine with a snort. Oh, terrific. Well, it was one way to attract attention.

Embarrassed, she looked away. Nell Calder was being introduced. Applause.

‘This one was inspired by my ex-husband,' said the poet. ‘It's called “Can I have custody of the egg-timer?”'

Conscious of Springy Hair's presence by her side, Bella made a sweeping I'm-just-looking-for-my-friend cast of the room, trying to see round the woman in front. Suddenly, across the room, half-hidden by a woman holding her glass in front of her, Bella caught a glimpse of a man. Dark, floppy hair. The edge of a face with horn-rimmed glasses. Patrick? A jolt. Dry mouth. Thudding heart. Even now. Craning her head to see, the memory caught her unawares, flooding over her in a wash, leaving her pale and breathless.

∼ ∼ ∼

She catches herself looking round the room for him. Perhaps he is in the kitchen, rootling about in the fridge for a corner of cheese, or in the loo absorbed in a copy of the
National Geographic.
Of course he isn't here. She
does
know that. And yet. These people – his sister, Sophie, who suddenly looks so slight and frail as if the lightest breeze would carry her off, her right hand clasping her left arm behind her back, holding herself; James, one of Patrick's oldest friends, uncomfortable and aware of his paunch in a too-tight borrowed suit; Rose, Patrick's mother, immaculately turned out as for a wedding, solicitously anticipating with lighthouse eyes the needs of every guest – ‘A drop more dry sherry? Another smoked salmon canapé? Everyone's been marvellous, really. I've hardly had to do a thing. Do let me get you something. Just a little bite?'; his father, Joseph, held together by his crisply tailored suit, dark as wrought iron, staring down into his heavy glass at the ice boulders floating and colliding in their enclosed lake of Scotch – he looks as if he would gladly join them, slide into that welcoming liquid and feel it flow round him, through him, in him, pushing out the warm blood that obstinately completes another tireless circuit of his body, swooshing through
him, steeling his arteries with its icy anaesthetic, clasping him sweetly until he is numb and feels no more.

And there, a small clutch of Patrick's colleagues, balancing side plates and cocktail napkins and glasses, taking embarrassed bites of too-good, tempting titbits; his brother, Alan, nodding in earnest agreement with Aunt Patsy, scooping up the coins in his trouser pocket, chinking them in his grasp, then jangling them loose again: scoop, chink, jangle – finding what comfort he can by being in control at least of these compliant coins.

But, of course,
he
isn't here. Bella knows it, and yet still it seems as if these people who were closest to him – people who had helped him take his first stumbling steps, compared scabby knees with him in the playground, coughed over a first stolen cigarette with him, worked with him, argued with him, laughed with him, kissed him, loved him – they seem between them to make a shape, a Patrick-shaped space, so that really she feels he must be here. Surely they would only all be here because of him?

‘Try and eat something, Bella, hmm?' A platter of soft asparagus stems, swaddled like delicate newborns in thinly rolled brown bread (no crusts, of course – ‘These little extra efforts do make all the difference I find'), hovers under her nose. Bella takes one and obediently moves it towards her mouth. She could do this. She could function like a normal person. Her teeth mechanically march up and down, doing their drill. She presses her lips with her napkin – blue, mid-blue, almost the same colour as that old shirt of Patrick's, the one with the collar so worn she'd tried to get him to cut it up for shoe-cloths, the one that now lies unwashed beneath her pillow waiting for her,
waiting for her to press her face into its crumpled cloth, breathe its soft blueness, button it around her.

Ting, ting. A strange sound, metal on glass. A knife tapped against a wineglass, edge on, like a child chopping off the head of a boiled egg; a sound effect to punctuate every wedding, every anniversary, to herald every speech, a sound of celebration. Someone is saying something. Yes, faces are all turning in one direction. Bella tilts her face in mimicry, one more sunflower unthinkingly following the sun.

Alan, Patrick's brother, is speaking:

‘… all for coming, many from a great distance. I have – we have all – been immensely pleased. Touched. To see so many of you here. So many friends. Family. I – well.'

He clears his throat, presses his lips firmly together, sealing in the words.

‘Anyway,' he smiles tightly, ‘I know Patrick wouldn't have wanted us all to be mooning about with faces as long as a wet weekend, and he would have hated to see good liquor go to waste, so please, raise your glasses. To Patrick.'

‘To Patrick,' they echo.

Alan raises his glass again, the ice tinkling softly like a half-heard bell blown by a distant breeze.

‘May his memory live on,' he says.

‘May his memory live on.'

No, she thinks, she won't settle for a neat collection of memories, tidily bound up like a photograph album. She wants to run back to the cemetery, kick off her too-stylish, horribly perfect shoes, flicking each piece of smug black suede in a reckless trajectory high, high over the wall into the woodland beyond. She would fall to her knees, then, and scrabble at the earth, push the sticky clods aside with her hands, haul at the damp
soil, and wrench open the lid of that gleaming box. She would reach in and shake him and shout, ‘Stop it, Patrick. Stop it! It's not funny. Don't do this.'

She could see his face crinkling suddenly with laughter, his finger pushing his glasses further up his nose, giggling uncontrollably. ‘That was brilliant,' he'd say. ‘I really had you all there. You'll never know how hard it was to keep quiet all that time. When the vicar went on about how I'd always been a considerate, honest man, I had to bite my cheek to stop myself spurting into laughter. Oh, come on, Bel, it
was
funny – admit it. Great hat, by the way. Is it new?'

And she would have to laugh then, too, and whack him playfully for scaring her so, and then they'd talk about it, sharing the best bits again, doing impressions, comparing the outfits, commenting on who turned up late, which part was most moving, who wept the most conspicuously, who merely dabbed the corner of one eye politely with a handkerchief, laughing together.

But it isn't a joke. And she knows then that she won't go back to the cemetery. Can't go back. Won't plunge her arms down deep into the spongy soil. As long as she didn't look, then it could still be just a box down there, no more than a long chest of polished oak lying empty in the silent earth – and Patrick could be anywhere: at home, pottering about ‘doing things that need to be done around the house' as he would say, which mostly seemed to involve looking at appliances or objects in need of repair, saying ‘hmm' a lot and then sitting down with a coffee and a crossword puzzle; at work, being sensible and efficient, writing reports or out on a site somewhere, assessing, noticing details, making notes; engaged in a meaningful relationship with his beloved computer; or sprawling on the sofa, a newspaper over his face, snorting with that peculiar half-whistling noise as he breathed out
until she nudged him or tweaked his nose to get him to stop.

Someone is hugging her. She squeezes the navy-suited body back softly, politely, unaware of who it is yet grateful for its solid warmth. A hand pats her consolingly on the shoulder, a master rewarding his faithful dog for carrying out a trick well. And it was a trick. Sip your sherry, nibble a canapé, proffer your cheek to be kissed, shed a silent tear or two. No screaming; no wailing; no ugly, wrenching sobs dragging her whole ribcage; no face bizarrely painted with black mascara trails, streaked by tears that seemed as if they would never run dry; no sitting curled up on the floor, head tucked tight to her knees, clutching herself, holding herself together in case she falls apart in sharp, brittle fragments, or subsides slowly, sliding across the floor in a pool of tears and pain. No. She could accomplish this trick very well indeed. She smiles and kisses the cheek, wondering how soon she can leave.