Separate Beds (41 page)

‘No, I’ve lost money.’

‘Don’t look like that. I’m sure we’ll live. Cashpoint fraud or something.’ She took another look at his face. ‘How much?’

‘At least four thousand. Possibly a bit more.’

She swallowed. ‘But how?’

‘That’s it, Annie. That’s the point. On the stock market. I made a wrong decision and now I owe it.’

The bunch of cropped thyme sifted down from her grasp and fell to the ground. ‘My God,’ she said. He watched her anger mount. ‘My God.’

‘Sorry,’ he said miserably. ‘I took matters into my own hands and did a bit of spread-betting on the market. I bet on recovery.’

‘You did
what
?’ She struggled for mastery. ‘When we had been so careful.’

He couldn’t tell her the whole truth but his explanation was as frank as he could manage and he finished by adding: ‘I wanted to make some money. Not much but enough to
pay some of our bills.’ He scuffed at the stones on the path. ‘That was important to me.’

Annie groped her way towards the garden bench and sank down. ‘So you risked our money? But I don’t understand why you’d do so when we were coping.’

‘Actually, Annie, I wanted to make enough to buy you a ring.’

‘A ring!’

‘I wanted to make up for your mother’s. I thought it would please you.’

‘A
ring
would please me?’

‘You always said how much it meant to you.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘It would have done once upon a time. But it isn’t once upon a time. If you wanted to
please
me you could have taken me out to lunch, taken me walking, anything … like we used to … and that would have done, Tom. Perfectly.’

To his shame, tears ran down her cheeks and he rammed his hands into his pockets.

‘OK … OK …’ Annie scrubbed at them. ‘I’m trying to see this your way. You were doing a nice thing but you also knew things were getting difficult in the financial markets. You said so many times. Why didn’t you stop?’ She grabbed his arm. ‘Why?’

‘Because …’ He faced her. ‘I’m not sure you’d understand.’

‘Try me.’

‘All right. It made me feel better. I needed to know I was bringing in some money. I needed to do something.’

‘Tom, I was selling my clothes, sacking Zosia, selling … whatever I could lay hands on. We were doing our best to economize.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘And you didn’t think how addictive these things are? How many people lose their shirts?’

‘No, of course not.’ Inside the pockets, his fingers clenched. ‘Yes.’

I am addicted to its unpredictable nature … to my desire for mastery
.

I was
…

At that Annie whirled to her feet. Blazingly, spittingly angry, tear-stained and beside herself. ‘I never want to set eyes on you again.’

Leaving him on the bench, she disappeared back into the house. He noted the white rose had put forth a second phase of blooms … a squirrel chatting in the sycamore … the scattering of shredded thyme on the path.

A few minutes later, the front door slammed.

Sadie took one look at the shaking, incandescent Annie and drew her into the flat. ‘I guess you need a brandy,’ she said.

Very shortly, they were seated on Sadie and Andrew’s tiny balcony at their Westminster flat, sipping brandy and eating nuts. The traffic roared, the sirens sounded, and car fumes floated through the air.

‘You’ll stay here tonight,’ Sadie said. ‘I’ll lend you what you need. Andrew won’t be back till late, and we can eat pasta and get pleasantly pie-eyed.’

The brandy made Annie gag. ‘I hope Tom looks in on his mother.’

‘Not your problem, sweetie.
His
. Now, tell me all about it.’

At one point, Sadie interrupted her. With that little shake
of her blonde head, she said, ‘You do have an option, sweetie, and at risk of repeating myself, you
can
dump the guy.’

Late that night, in Sadie’s tiny spare bedroom, Annie tossed and turned on the single divan, which was all that could be fitted into the space.

‘Four thousand …’ she said aloud. ‘I should have known Tom was up to something.’ She dragged the hair back from her face so savagely that it hurt and she stuffed a fist into her mouth.

She thought of all the lists she had made. Lists to manage and contain their life. Stretching back to … oh, she wasn’t sure when. When first she tumbled to the fact that her job was not going to change the world? When she realized that Tom showed signs of loving his job more than his family? When Mia told her parents she hated them and left. Shopping lists. Lists for the children’s uniform. For the perfect Christmas. For a holiday … No one else could match Annie for her forward thinking.
Annie the commissariat
. In her kit, every possible medical eventuality was catered for, every instance of sunburn, every sleepless night. There were jelly shoes for stony beaches, tin-openers, spare sunglasses. She thought, too, of her meticulous keeping of the accounts … all those occasions she had applied herself to these activities in order – and this was frightening – to make the time pass and not to notice too much what was going on around her.

Those past years felt smothering – a new and peculiar sensation. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, Annie knew that she no longer had a ‘stop’ button to press to bring herself to order.

She had never seen Tom looking quite so at bay as when he had approached her in the garden. She had run through
the options: was he ill? Drunk? No, Tom wasn’t drunk.
Divorce finally because, despite all the strides they had made, they had not quite made it?
One had to be realistic about human behaviour and about expectation. But why,
why
, now (she had thought), just as things were better and more equable? There was an argument for saying that unhappiness was akin to depression in the way it played with its victims. In its grip it was impossible to do anything. It was only when it backed off a bit that action could be taken. Maybe that was where Tom was at.

In the small, stuffy room, she clutched the sides of the narrow bed and tears rolled down her neck on to the sheets.

The next day Sadie gave her breakfast, kissed her tenderly and ordered her to report back. Annie struggled to work, put in a skimpy day and left early.

To her surprise, Tom was lurking in the kitchen. Even more surprising, he was dressed in his walking shorts and T-shirt. Beside him, on the table, were his rucksack and – unused for longer than Annie could remember – the canvas bag had carried their boots.

‘You’ve come back.’

She didn’t want to look at him. ‘As you see. Children? Hermione?’ She stuck her handbag on the table and ran a glass of water from the tap.

‘All sorted. I told them you and Sadie were having one of your evenings.’

‘Tom –’

He cut her off. ‘Go and get changed, Annie. Walking things. Now.’

She considered saying no. But, to be honest, she was astonished that Tom had taken an initiative. So she didn’t.

An hour later, Tom drove into a car park on the edge of the North Downs and jerked on the brake.

‘Hey,’ said Annie, as she emerged into the warm evening. ‘Mind the brake.’ She spoke mechanically. The journey had been accomplished in silence, and she had concentrated on the early-autumn landscape, which was so much more colourful than those of the previous dismal months. The summer’s colours had been so pallid and unsure of themselves – neurasthenic whites, pale, pale yellows, dis appointingly cool pinks. Now the riots of ochre, orange and brown, the fat red hips and the untidy, non-conformist sprawl of Old Man’s Beard extended a generous invitation to experience the sensations of a season on the turn.

‘Sorry.’ Tom flung open the boot and pulled out his stuff.

‘Did you bring socks?’ Annie sat down on the lip of the boot to change her shoes. Tom tossed her a pair. She flexed them and put them on. Bending down to fasten the laces, she felt the now slanting sun target her arms and head. Straightening up, she slotted a bottle of water into the day sack –
old habits
– and handed it to Tom to carry. ‘OK.’

Howell Wood nestled at the bottom of the ridge leading up into the downs and Tom headed at a fast lick along its main ride to the centre. Annie knew better than to try to match him at this stage and concentrated on loosening and warming up her muscles. The walk was one they both knew and, once in the swing, she would catch up and probably pass him.

Under the trees, which were mostly deciduous – beech, ash and hornbeam, so much more attractive than depressing, airless pine – the going underfoot was dry and tussocky. Wood pigeons were busy calling and grey squirrels scurried
about. Otherwise, whatever other animals there were remained hidden and silent: no doubt, a watchful silence.

Tom slowed and Annie drew abreast. ‘Are you ready to talk?’ he asked.

She quickened her pace and threw over her shoulder, ‘No.’

Tom was forced to pound along beside her and they neared the edge of the wood. Ahead, the path led up the turf escarpment to the ridge.

Tom stopped.

A leaf fluttered above them. Within her boot, Annie’s toe cramped and she hopped up and down while it passed.

‘Can we talk, Annie?’

‘I don’t want to talk to you.’

‘You must talk to me.’

‘There’s no must about it.’ Abandoning the disconsolate figure of Tom, she whirled around and headed at a lope towards the path up the ridge. Behind her, Tom called out, ‘Annie,’ and she responded by quickening her pace.

Scrambling and sometimes slipping, she forced herself up the path as fast as she could manage. Cramp threatened in her right calf and her breath came in gasps. Close to the rise, she stumbled over a heap of flints and grabbed the turf, plus a handful of sheep droppings. Dirt lodged under her fingernails. Cursing, she scrubbed at her fingers with a tissue until they reddened. An Adonis Blue butterfly fluttered past, and a second.

Once at the top, she was forced to draw breath. ‘Annie …’ Tom had caught up. He bent over to catch his breath but he managed to grab her by the arm. ‘We are going to discuss this. Now.’

‘It’s not the money,’ she said, and bit her lip. ‘That’s bad enough. It’s you keeping it secret. You didn’t trust me.’

‘I wanted to surprise you with the ring.’

‘Don’t give me that.’ She looked directly into his eyes. ‘Please.’

They were high enough for the wind to catch at her hair, which blew back in a wild tangle and he smoothed it behind her ears.

‘You never gave me any reason to think you would trust me, Annie.’ He placed his hands on either side of her head and anchored her hair. ‘It could have gone either way. If I’d closed down my position a couple of weeks ago we would be holding a different conversation. I misjudged.’

‘That’s what they all say.’ She stepped away from him.

‘Don’t make it worse, Annie.’

‘How can it be any worse?’

‘Didn’t you ever ask yourself why I spent so much time on the computer?’

‘Job applications,’ she bit out at him. ‘Which any normal person would have been doing. I didn’t realize it was attention-seeking.’

‘I wish you’d asked me what I was doing.’ Tom checked himself. ‘Not that I blame you.’

Annie began to run.

This time Tom made no move to follow her. Soon she was loping along the ridge, her feet slapping down on the path. A tiny spray of chalk marked her passing, and she wove and dodged around the flints. Up here on the ridge, the wind strengthened, buffeting her face, and any tears of grief were replaced by wind ones. Her lungs threatened to burst but she persisted and, quite quickly, found her level.

An observer, seeing her silhouetted against the big sky, might think her a mad woman. She didn’t care. The exhilaration of the run had caught her up. In this semi-wild area she felt free, elementally connected with the air, weightless and stripped back to the essentials. A creature of light and sun.

She continued running until her legs gave out. Dropping down on to the grass, she lay on her back, knees bent, and waited for her breathing to slow to normal.
Patience
. The grass was softish and a convenient indentation cradled her body. High up, a skylark emitted its thin, sweet sound. She needed to wipe her eyes and blow her nose, and scrabbled for a tissue but, remembering the sheep droppings, shoved it back into her pocket. The edge of the T-shirt had to do. The day was ending with a burst of glowing light and she allowed it to stream through her. She thought of how tired she was from everything – but of how, actually, in the long run, it didn’t matter. She thought how tiredness could be overcome if you laughed, and that was more important.

She remembered Tom in the garden, his face heavy with despair and sadness – and, in the micro-second before he opened his mouth and confessed, how she had thought,
I don’t care what he says, I don’t want a divorce
.

It was almost seven o’clock by the time she retraced her steps back down the path to Howell Wood. Leaning against a stack of wood, Tom was waiting. At her approach, he levered himself upright. ‘I want you to listen to something.’ He handed her the bottle of water, drew her towards the log pile and made her sit down. ‘Wait.’

She was too weary to ask what, but sat where Tom indicated. Balancing on the wood, she tucked up her knees and
crossed her arms. A minute passed, then several. It was growing cooler, and she shivered. Tom put his arm experimentally around her and left it there when she didn’t shake him off.

Then Annie heard it.
Hoo, hoo
.
Who cooks for you?
The call of the owl. As the bird swooped from one roost to another, it floated under the tree canopy, its sound as ancient as the woods and the land.

Tom extracted a handkerchief from his pocket, leaned over and wiped Annie’s face. ‘I remembered.’ He dabbed at her chin. ‘There,’ he said, and flicked her jaw with his finger. ‘Because you’re worth it.’

Annie hoped for a repeat, but the owl had fallen silent. She held out dirty hands to Tom. ‘Sheep droppings.’

Tom grasped the water bottle, poured it over her fingers and wiped away the stains. ‘I’m happy to say that you’re now less disgusting.’