Talking It Over (12 page)

I laughed as well at the time, but it stuck with me. Mothers telling daughters how to manage their husbands. Necessary truths passed down the female line over centuries, and what does the accumulated wisdom amount to? ‘It’s always a good idea to keep them on the hop.’ That depressed me. I thought, Oh no, when I marry, if I marry, things have got to be straight, out in the open. I’m not going to play games or have secrets. But it seems to be starting already. Perhaps it’s inevitable. Do you think the institution doesn’t work otherwise?

What should I have done? If I were trying to keep things straight, I should have told Stuart about Oliver’s appearance at the door and what I did with his flowers. But then should I also have said that Oliver rang up the next day and asked if I’d liked them? That I told Oliver I’d put them down the waste-disposal and the phone went silent, and when I finally said, ‘Are you still there?’ he just answered, ‘I love you,’ and hung up. Should I have told Stuart all that?

No, presumably. So I made a joke about the holiday suggestion. ‘Bored with my company already?’ – which not surprisingly Stuart took the wrong way. He thought I was cross, so he got flustered and started telling me how much he loved me, and
that
wasn’t what I wanted to hear either, though of course in one way it’s what I always want to hear.

I’d made a joke of it. I’m not keeping him on the hop, but I am making a joke of things. This soon?

Stuart
I don’t think Gillian took too kindly to my suggestion that the three of us go on holiday together. I was about to explain when she sort of cut me off. Nothing she said, just a way she has of slightly turning and doing something else and not replying as quickly as she might. It’s funny, but I seem to have known that little habit for the whole of my life already.

So the holiday idea’s been dropped. Or rather, changed. Just a long weekend, just the two of us. Take the car down to Dover first thing on Friday morning, then head off into France. Monday’s a holiday, so we’ve got nearly four days. Find a little hotel somewhere, see the early autumn colours, go to a market and buy lots of strings of garlic which will start going mouldy before we can possibly use them up. No need to plan anything – and I’m someone who likes planning things, or rather gets worried if things aren’t planned. Perhaps this is a sign of Gill’s effect on me – that nowadays I can say something like, ‘Why don’t we just take off?’ And it’s not
far
, I know, or for long, and the chances of all the hotels in northern France being booked solid are pretty slim, so I’m not really worrying. Even so, it’s a start for me. It’s a start. I’m practising being spontaneous. That’s a joke, by the way.

Oliver seemed upset when I told him. It shows how really fragile he is at the moment, I suppose. We met for a drink. I told him we were heading off to France for the weekend. His face sort of fell, as if we were abandoning him. I wanted to add, ‘It isn’t for long’, or something like that, but you don’t exactly say that between friends, do you?

He didn’t answer at first, then asked where we’d be staying.

‘I don’t know. We’ll find somewhere.’

At this he seemed to liven up, and went back to being
Oliver. He put his hand on my forehead as if I was running a fever. ‘Are you well?’ he asked. ‘This isn’t like you. Whence this new spirit of recklessness? Haste thee to the druggist for a fébrifuge.’

This sort of banter went on for a while. He wanted to know which ferry we were taking, whether we were going via Calais or Boulogne, which direction we were heading, when we were coming back, etc.,
etc.
It didn’t seem particularly odd at the time, I suppose, but looking back I was surprised he didn’t say anything like, ‘Have a nice trip.’

When we parted, I said, ‘I’ll bring you some duty-free Gauloises.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he said.

‘What do you mean? It’s no trouble.’

‘Don’t bother,’ he repeated, sounding almost ratty.

Oliver
Jesus, I had this panic attack. We met in a pub, some crepuscular burrow where Stuart is a regular little furry creature, where he can crouch happily in the reconstructed inglenook (imitation Norman Shaw) and quaff his ale as his yeoman forefathers have so quaffed since antiquity. God I hate pubs. I especially hate pubs since I’ve given up smoking (the spurning of which addiction went completely unnoticed by our friend Stuart). Oh, and I also hate the word crepuscular. I think I’ll stop using it for a bit. Tip me the wink if I lapse, won’t you?

So we were sitting there, in this horrible place where the ‘glass of white’ is even more noxious than the yeoman’s brew, and their selection of Highland malts is less than the
finest, and I’m getting these pancreas-piercing whiffs of other people’s nicotine (hit me with a gasper, go on, do it to me – I’ll betray my country for a Silk Cut, I’ll betray my friends for a Winston) when Stuart, with a creepily smug look on his face, suddenly announces, ‘We’re taking off, you know.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘We’re taking off on Friday. Dover. First ferry and then you won’t see us for dust.’

I panicked, I admit it. I thought he was taking her away for ever. I saw them driving and driving. Strasbourg, Vienna, Bucharest, Istanbul, not stopping, not looking back. I saw her tossing newly gauffred curls as the open roadster headed east, away from Ollie … Temporarily I managed to re-erect my jocular facade, but inside I was panicking. He could take her away, I thought, he could just do that, he has such power to hurt me, this little furry creature who hasn’t even noticed that I’ve given up the weed. He has such a capacity for unreflecting cruelty now. And I’ve given him that.

But of course it turns out that the blithe
estivant
was only planning what he doubtless terms a Weekend Break.
Aestivate
, used
esp
. of animals, to spend the summer in a state of torpor. And the autumn. And most of his life. He has such sudden power to hurt, this Stuart.

He promised to send me a card. He promised to send me a fucking picture postcard.

Gillian
This is how the conversation went.

‘Can we go shopping some time?’

‘Shopping? Of course. What do you want to buy?’

‘Shopping for you.’

‘For me?’

‘Clothes.’

‘Don’t you like what I wear, Oliver?’ I tried to keep my tone light.

‘I want to clothe you.’

I thought the best thing to be, before this went any further, was brisk. ‘Oliver,’ I said trying to sound like his mother (or at least like mine), ‘Oliver, don’t be ridiculous. You haven’t even got a job.’

‘Oh I know I can’t afford to
pay,’
he said sarcastically. ‘I know I haven’t got any
money
, like Stuart.’ Then there was a pause, and his tone changed. ‘I just want to clothe you, that’s all. I could help. I want to take you shopping.’

‘Oliver, that’s very sweet of you,’ I said. Then, brisk again, ‘I’ll bear it in mind.’

‘I love you,’ he said.

I put the phone down on him.

That’s what I’m going to do, what I’ve decided to do. Be brisk, polite, and put the phone down. It’s ridiculous. He’s obviously in a mess at the moment. And he’s probably, without knowing it of course, jealous of our happiness. We went around together, the three of us, but then Stuart and I got married, and he feels excluded. Instead of three, it’s now two plus one, and he feels it. It’s quite normal in a way, I suppose. I’m sure he’ll get over it.

In any other circumstances I wouldn’t have minded going shopping with Oliver. Stuart isn’t much use, to be honest, not because he doesn’t enjoy shopping, but because he likes everything I try on. He says I look terrific in all colours and
all styles. If I came out of the changing-room with a bin-liner round my waist and a lampshade on my head he’d say that they suited me. Which is sweet and touching, as you can imagine, but not really much practical help.

Oliver
I’m not being fanciful. For once. No doubt you were imagining what you take to be my imaginings about Gillian’s vestments: a sable swirl out of
Boris Godounov
, colours by Rimsky, light summer prints by the infant Rossini, gay accessories by Poulenc … No, sorry. I’m neither a salivating cheque-signer (how could I be?), nor an orchidectomised walker; I just happen to know that my eye, my sense of colour, my
nous
about fabric are all superior to those of both Stuart and Gillian combined. Squared, cubed. At least, if one judges by results. Even people who don’t care about clothes look better in something that’s cut properly. And even people who say they don’t care how they look care how they look. Everyone does. It’s just that some people think they look their best by looking terrible. It’s a kind of arrogance, of course. I look like shit because my mind is on higher things, because I’m so busy I don’t have time to wash my hair, because if you really love me you’ll love me like this as well. Not that Gillian is anywhere near this category. On the contrary. It’s just I’d like to
make her over
.

Make over
. To refashion. But also, in Stuart’s mind, a term from the termitic world of business and finance. To make over: to transfer possession (of an object, a title) to someone else. Verb transitive.

Stuart
We had a wonderful weekend break. Headed off down the motorway from Calais. Turned left when we felt like it, found ourselves somewhere near Compiègne. Stopped at a village as it was getting dark. A half-timbered family hotel with rooms off a creaky wooden balcony running round two sides of a courtyard. Of course we went to a little market and naturally we bought a couple of plaited strings of garlic which will go mouldy before we’ve finished them. So we’d better give some away. The weather was a bit damp, but who cares?

It wasn’t till we were on the boat that I gave Oliver a thought, to be honest. I remembered him and suggested buying him some Gauloises. Gillian told me he’d given up smoking. How very odd. And untypical.

Gillian
I don’t know where to begin. I also don’t know where this is going to end, or how it’s going to end. What’s happening? It’s not my fault, but I feel guilty. I
know
it’s not my fault in any way, and still I feel guilty.

I don’t know if I did the right thing, either. Maybe I shouldn’t have done anything. Maybe what I did was an act of complicity, or looked as if it could have been. Perhaps everything – not that there
is
anything – should just have been allowed to come out into the open at that point. Why not? And yet … we’d had such a good few days I suppose I wanted to keep the mood going.

The first time it stopped raining was on the ferry back from Boulogne. That was ironic. That’s what made it happen in a way.

Going out, we crossed Dover-Calais. Then we drove hard
down the autoroute. We chose an exit from the motorway almost at random. We chose a village to stay in almost at random – it was the place we got to as the evening was drawing in. We left after breakfast on the Monday and stopped for lunch near Montdidier. Then on towards Amiens with the windscreen wipers going flip-flop as we drove past sodden barns and soaking cattle. Somewhere beyond Amiens I had a memory of the car-ferry docks at Calais. First they send you all round the town and then you get processed into a system with thousands of other people and it doesn’t feel at all like driving to a town on the coast and just getting on a boat. I mean, that’s what it ought to feel like, oughtn’t it? So I suggested to Stuart that we go to Boulogne instead. He was a bit against this at first because there aren’t as many ferries from Boulogne. On the other hand it would save us driving 30-odd extra kilometres in the rain, and anyway I said if we get there and there isn’t a ferry for hours we can just carry on to Calais. I’ve made this sound like an argument but it wasn’t anything like that. It was a happy discussion and then an easy decision. That’s how things are with us. Stuart never makes me feel his pride is riding on whether we do what I suggest or what he suggests. That was something I found attractive from the beginning. If you propose a change of plan to most men they take it – even if not consciously, and that’s often worse – as some sort of insult or criticism. They can’t bear you to have different ideas about relatively unimportant things. But as I say, Stuart’s not like that. ‘OK, Boulogne it is,’ he said, as another Renault flashed past and blinded the windscreen with spray.

The point is this. No-one knew where we’d gone. No-one
knew where we decided to stay. We set off, stopped at random, pottered around, changed our plans, and got the first crossing from a port we hadn’t arrived at. And Oliver was on the boat.

It had rained. It rained solidly every single day in fact, and it didn’t stop as we were queuing to drive on to the ferry. All the insides of the boat seemed damp as well, the steps and the handrails. We sat in one of those lounges that are part of a huge bar area and the windows were misted up with condensation; when you rubbed them you still couldn’t see much because of all the rain dripping down outside. About half way across the Channel a man in a plastic mackintosh came back to a nearby table and announced that the rain had finally stopped – just our luck, he added. When Stuart and I heard this we got up and looked for the nearest exit. You know how it is on ferries – you get a bit disoriented, you never know if you’re on A deck or B deck, or which bit of the outside you’re getting to when you go through a door – the front, the stern, or the sides. So we had chosen an exit at random, and I stepped over one of those high door-frames which are presumably intended to stop the sea water from sloshing into the saloon. We were halfway along one side of the ship, and as I looked to the left I saw Oliver about fifteen feet away, staring out into the Channel. I saw him in profile. He wasn’t looking at me.

I turned away at once, and pushed back against Stuart.

‘Sorry,’ I said, and went back inside. He followed. I said I’d felt queasy suddenly. He said didn’t I need fresh air then. I said it was the sudden fresh air that had done it. We sat down again. He was very solicitous. I said it would be all right. I half kept my eye on that exit.