Marian Keyes - Watermelon (29 page)

"Hello," I said, for lack of anything better to say.

"Claire," said James's voice.

So, it was him.

We finally got to speak to each other.

"James," I replied.

And then I wasn't quite sure what to say.

I wasn't too current on the etiquette of addressing runaway husbands. Especially since I was pretty sure that he wasn't in the process of trying to wheedle his way back into my affections.

We need a book. A book that tells us how to address returning runaway husbands.

You know, the type of book that tells us the correct knife to use to shell a scallop and the proper way to address, say, a bishop, for example (just for the record, "That's a lovely ring you're wearing, Your Grace" is usually regarded as polite enough for a first meeting).

So this book would gently instruct us about the correct number of times the word bastard could be used in any one sentence, and when it is regarded as impolite not to use physical violence, etc.

For example, if your boyfriend/husband/fella has simply disappeared for a couple of days after a particularly important football match and has just returned to the family home looking green, unshaven and disheveled, it would be appropriate to say:

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"Where the fuck have you been for the past three days, you drunken, selfish, louser?"

But as the person out there hadn't written the book yet I had to rely on my own instinct.

"How are you?" he asked.

As if you cared, I thought.

"Very well," I said politely.

A pause.

"Oh!...And how are you?" I asked hurriedly.

Honestly, where were my manners?

Is it any wonder that he'd left me?

"Well," he replied thoughtfully. "Yes, quite well."

Pompous fucker, I thought.

"Claire," he continued smoothly. "I'm in Dublin."

"I know," I said ungraciously. "My mother mentioned that you'd called last night."

"Yes, I don't doubt that she did," he said with faint irony.

You could never say that James was a fool.

A bastard, I grant you. But never a fool.

"Where are you staying?" I asked.

He named some downtown bed and breakfast. On a street that could only be described as On the Front Line. Not James's usual style at all. He was more likely to be found in a plush corporate type of place. All Bureau de Changes and little shops in the hotel lobby. From James's address I de- duced that he was not in Dublin on business. Because if he were, he would be on expenses and staying somewhere a damn slight nicer and more ex- pensive. And if he wasn't in Dublin on business, then just why was he here?

"So what can I do for you?" I asked in a slightly nasty tone. He wasn't the only one around here who could say things with irony.

My tone of voice was intended to convey that I would not, as the saying goes, piss on him if he was on fire.

"What you can do for me, Claire," he said, "is see me. Will you do that?"

"Of course," I said obediently.

How else can I break every bone in your body? I thought.

"You will?" he asked, sounding surprised. As though he had been anti- cipating some kind of battle.

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"But certainly." I gave a little laugh. "What are you sounding so shocked about?"

Because when I've finished breaking every bone in your body, I'm going to cut off your penis and stick it in your mouth and I certainly can't do that over the phone either, now, can I? I thought.

"Well, um...nothing, nothing. That's...um...that's great," he said.

He still sounded surprised.

He'd obviously expected me to refuse to see him. That would account for the coaxing tone and the surprise at my calm agreement to meet him. But what would I gain from refusing to see him? I wanted the answers to a couple of questions.

Like, Why did you stop loving me?

And, How much money are you going to give me for Kate?

How else were we going to sort out our respective legal positions and our relationship to Kate if we didn't meet to talk about it?

Perhaps he expected to find that I'd gone to pieces totally.

But, well...hey!...I wasn't in pieces now, was I?

I wasn't better or anything like it, but no matter what way I looked at it I couldn't deny that I'd greatly improved.

How odd!

When did that happen?

You know that bit at the end of a relationship when all your friends gather around and say lots of annoying things like "Plenty more fish in the sea" and "He would never have made you happy"? Well, when they get to the part about "It'll mend with time," try to fight your initial instinct to give them a black eye.

Don't knock it, because it really does work: I was living proof. The only problem with time mending things is that it takes longer. So, effective and all as it is, it's precious little use to those of us in a hurry.

I suppose the sex with Adam hadn't hurt my recovery either. But I had to drag my thoughts back to the present. James was talking again.

"Where should we meet?" he asked.

"Why don't you come out to the house here?" I suggested.

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I didn't want this to be an away game. I wanted this meeting to be on my turf, if not on my terms.

"You can get a taxi. Or if you prefer you could take a bus and ask the conductor to let you off at the traffic circle at the end of--"

"Claire!" he interrupted, laughing at how silly I was being. "I've been out to your house plenty of times. I know how to get there."

"Of course you do," I said smoothly.

I knew that.

But I couldn't resist the chance to treat him like a total stranger. To let him know that he no longer belonged.

"Will we say eleven-thirty?" I said with authority.

"Er, fine," he said.

"Lovely," I said acidly. "See you then."

And I hung up without waiting for his reply.

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Now, I would be lying to both myself and you if I didn't admit that it would have given me a great deal of satisfaction if James had returned to me on his knees, a broken man. I would have been delighted if he had crawled up the driveway on all fours, sobbing and begging for me to take him back. I wanted him to be unshaven, filthy and wearing torn clothes. I wanted his hair to be all long and matted and for him to be looking de- ranged and obviously demented with grief at the terrible realization that he had lost the only woman he had ever loved. And indeed could ever love.

So vivid was this mental image of mine that when eleven-thirty rolled around and he appeared at the gate, I was hugely disappointed to find that he was in fact walking fully upright. Prehistoric man must have felt the same sense of disbelief when one of his fellows hopped down out of one of the trees and started to parade around on just two legs.

I stood at the window and watched him as he walked up the short drive. Mind you, I stood well back. I didn't think that it would enhance my dignity for him to see me with my nose pressed up against the window.

I had been wondering what he would look like. And now I would see.

That gave me a violent twist of pain.

He was no longer mine, so he would look different. My subtle but definite mark on him would be gone. And what did he look like?

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Was he different?

Had Denise made him fat?

Was he badly dressed?

Had Denise sent him out in the same little jackets and sweatpants she dressed her three little boys in? All purples and turquoises. Very nasty.

Would he look like a cruel and heartless bastard, coming to take my home and my child away from me?

But he just looked so normal.

Walking along with his hands in his pockets. He could have been anyone going anywhere. Although he looked different from the way that I'd re- membered him.

Thinner, I thought.

And I was sure that something else was different too...what was it?...I wasn't sure...had he...had he always been that short?

And he wasn't dressed the way I'd expected him to be.

Every time I'd thought of seeing him, I'd imagined him dressed in the same Grim Reaper suit that he wore that day at the hospital. Today he was wearing jeans, a blue shirt and some kind of jacket.

Very casual. Very laid-back.

Obviously not treating this occasion with the great weight that it de- served.

It felt wrong.

Incongruous.

Like a hangman turning up to do a day's work wearing a Hawaiian shirt and a baseball cap on back-to-front, grinning from ear to ear as he told knock-knock jokes.

He rang the bell. I took a deep breath and walked to answer the door.

My heart was thumping.

I swung back the door and there he stood.

The same. He looked so heartbreakingly the same.

His hair was still dark brown, his face was still pale, his eyes were still green, his jaw was still lean. He gave me a funny twisted half smile, and after an awkward pause, he said expressionlessly, "Claire, how are you?"

"Fine." I smiled slightly--politely--at him. "Why don't you come in?"

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He came into the hall and I almost keeled over as a wave of nausea hit me.

It was one thing to banter calmly with him over the phone. But it was a hell of a lot harder to deal with him in the flesh.

However, unpleasant and all as it was, I had to behave like an adult. The days of running crying to my bedroom were long gone. And he wasn't looking too happy himself.

I knew he didn't love me anymore but he was only human. Well, I pre- sumed he was only human. And couldn't help being affected by this mo- mentous occasion. But I knew James. He'd recover his aplomb in no time at all.

That was what I had to do.

I graciously said to him, "Can I take your jacket?" as though he was just someone who had come to try and sell me a central heating system.

"Yes, I suppose so," he said reluctantly, and shrugged out of it and warily handed it over to me, taking what seemed like excessive care to make sure that our hands didn't touch. He looked longingly at the jacket, as though he was never going to see it again and wanted to memorize its every detail. What was he afraid of?

I wasn't going to steal the bloody jacket. It wasn't nice enough.

"I'll put this away," I said, and for the first time our eyes met properly.

He did a quick scan of my face and said levelly, "You're looking well, Claire."

He said it with the enthusiasm an undertaker usually reserves for someone who, against all the odds, survives a terrible car crash. "Yes." He nodded, a tiny bit surprised. "You are looking well."

"Well, why wouldn't I?" I gave him a knowing little smile, conveying--at least I hoped I conveyed--dignity and irony in equal amounts. Letting him know that although he no longer loved me, that although he had hurt and humiliated me, I was a reasonable human being and would get over it. Almost making a joke of the whole sorry mess and practically inviting him, the perpetrator, to join in and laugh along with me.

I couldn't believe that I had managed that.

I felt pretty pleased with myself.

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Because, although I did not feel calm and civilized, as God is my witness, I was going to do a damn good job at acting it.

However, he didn't seem to find it as gently amusing as I managed to pretend I did.

He gave me a wintry look.

More undertakerish vibes.

The miserable fucker.

Since I was prepared to try to be nice and civil about all this, surely, surely, he could too. After all, what had he got to lose?

Maybe he had prepared a beautiful speech about how I would get over him, how he wasn't good enough for me, how we were never really suited, how I was better off without him. Maybe he was disappointed that he wasn't going to get to say it.

He'd probably stood in front of the mirror in his bedroom at the hotel and practiced flinging his arms around me in a beseeching manner while he told me in a voice choked with emotion that, although he still loved me, he was no longer in love with me.

We stood in the hall for a few seconds, James looking as if his entire family had just been wiped out in a machete attack. I'm sure I didn't look much better. The tension was terrible.

"Come on into the dining room," I told him, taking charge. Otherwise we could have stood there all day, white-faced, miserable and paralyzed by nerves. "We won't be disturbed there and we can have the table in case we need to spread out documents or whatever."

He nodded grimly and walked down the hall in front of me.

How dare he! What was he looking so bloody uptight about? Surely I was the one who should be afforded that right?

Kate was waiting in the dining room.

She lay in her crib and looked beautiful.

I picked her up and stood holding her, her face against mine.

"This is Kate," I said simply.

He stared at the two of us, opening and closing his mouth.

He looked a bit like a goldfish. A pale, serious goldfish.

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"She...she's gotten so big, she's grown so much," he finally managed.

"Babies do." I nodded at him sagely.

The subtext being, of course, "If you had stuck around, you bastard, you'd have been there for when she was doing that growing." But I didn't say it.

I didn't need to.

He knew it.

It was written all over his sheepish, shamed face.

"And she's called Kate?" he asked.

The surge of anger was so intense that I thought I would surely kill him.

He hadn't even found out her name, and there were plenty of people he could have asked.

"After Kate Bush?" he asked. Referring to a singer whom, while I certainly liked her, I wouldn't have ever considered calling my firstborn child after.

"Yes," I managed bitterly. "After Kate Bush."

I wasn't going to bother giving him the real reason. What the hell did he care?

"Hey!" he said, the idea obviously just having occured to him. "Can I hold her?" In different circumstances he could have been described as speaking with enthusiasm.

My anger and bitterness had obviously gone right over his neatly combed head.

I wanted to shout at him, "Of course you can hold her, she's waited two months for you to hold her. You're her bloody father!" But I managed not to.

I felt like a traitor, like a third-world mother who is forced by economic circumstances to sell her child to the rich gringo. But I passed her from my arms to his.

And the look on his face.

It was as if he had suddenly become mentally retarded.

All smiles and shining eyes and reverential expression.

Of course he held her all wrong.

Crossways, instead of lengthways.

Horizontal, instead of vertical.

People who know nothing about babies hold them like that.

I know because I did it for the first day or so of Kate's life

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until one of the other mothers, who was sick of hearing Kate roaring, wearily set me right. ("Up, not across!")

But you wouldn't catch me being sympathetic to James for making the same mistake.

Kate started to cry.

Well, of course the poor child did! Being held like a rolled-up carpet by a strange man. Wouldn't you cry? James looked frightened.

"What's wrong with her?" he asked. "How do I make her stop?" The reverential expression disappeared and was replaced by naked fear.

I had known all that mister-nice-guy stuff was too good to be true.

"Here," he said, thrusting her at me. He looked at both of us with an expression of distaste. There was obviously no room for crying women in James's world.

He hadn't always been like that, you know.

Well, he'd married me. And I wasn't famous for blinking back the tears. Better out than in was always my motto. But looking at him now, at his fastidious expression, I marveled--and it wasn't for the first time--at what a bastard he had become.

"Oh golly." I smiled acidly. "She doesn't seem to like you."

I laughed as if it was a joke and took her back from James's yielding arms.

He couldn't get rid of her fast enough. I cooed and shushed her. She stopped crying. For a moment I felt bitter satisfaction that Kate had sided with me against him.

And then I felt sad and ashamed. James was Kate's father. I should do everything in my power to make them like each other.

I'd find another man to love. But Kate had only the one father. "Sorry." I smiled apologetically at him. "It's just that you're new to her. Give her a chance. She's scared."

"You're right. It'll probably just take a bit of time," he said, cheering up a bit.

"That's all," I reassured him. But at the same time thinking, horror-struck, when exactly does he propose spending this alleged "bit of time" with her?

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If he had come to Dublin to try to take Kate back to London, then he had to die. It was really quite simple.

He hadn't done the doting father bit up until now, so what did he want?

"Coffee."

"What?" I asked him sharply.

"Is there any chance of a cup of coffee?" he asked.

He was looking at me as if I was a bit peculiar.

How many times had he asked me before I heard?

"Sure," I told him.

I put Kate back in her crib and went into the kitchen to make him his coffee. I should have offered before. But in all the excitement it never crossed my mind. It was a bit of a relief to get into the kitchen. I sighed long and deep and hard when I closed the door behind me.

My hands shook so much I could hardly fill the kettle. Being with him was so hard. Having to pretend that I was fine was exhausting. And con- stantly keeping a lid on murderous anger was a demanding business--but I had to do it. I was going to salvage as much as I could for Kate out of this.

I brought the coffee back into the dining room.

And, no, I didn't offer cookies.

I'm sorry, but I just wasn't a big enough person.

He was leaning over the crib, attempting to talk to Kate.

He was having some kind of muttered, uptight discussion with her.

As if she were a business colleague and not a two-month-old baby.

He was not behaving the way nice, normal, warm people do in the presence of young babies. You know, as if they've left their brains out, overnight, in the rain. All singsong noises and doting rhetorical questions. Asking stupid things like "Who's the most beautiful girl in the whole world?" And the correct answer not, as you might expect, Cindy Crawford, but in fact Kate Webster.

Instead he sounded as if he was discussing tax reforms with her.

But he didn't seem to notice anything amiss.

I put the coffee down on the dining room table and the

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moment the china touched the mahogany I realized that I had automatically made James's coffee the way that James liked it.

I was furious!

Couldn't I even pretend to have forgotten?

Couldn't I have given him a milk and two sugars instead of a black, no sugar and half cold water?

And then, when he gagged on it, nursing his burned and oversugared mouth, couldn't I have airily said something like "Oh sorry, I forgot, you're the one who doesn't like sugar?"

But no.

I'd missed a precious chance to let him know that he didn't matter at all to me anymore.

"Oh thanks, Claire," he said, sipping from the mug. "You remembered the way I like it." And he smiled with satisfaction.

I could have happily gone to the kitchen and doused myself in kerosene and set myself alight, so angry was I.

"You're welcome," I said from between gritted teeth.

There was a little silence.

Then James started to speak.

He seemed to have suddenly clicked into Relaxed Mode. The apparent nerves at the front door had evaporated.

I only wish mine had.

"You know, I can't believe that I'm actually here," he mused easily, leaning back in his chair, nursing the traitorous coffee between his cupped hands.