The Best of Friends (15 page)

Dan had had tears in his eyes when they'd appeared. Gina had left Vi and him together for a while and toured the shiny floored corridors, looking into day rooms where invalids sat in the vulnerability of their nightclothes, holding cups of tea and staring at blaring televisions. After an hour, a sister had said that Dan must sleep, and Gina had had to take Vi away, holding her by the hand like a recalcitrant child. Vi wanted somebody to blame, somebody to punish. She started
on the nurses as Gina towed her out of the ward, then had a go at two passing porters with a stretcher trolley on which a young man lay, chalk white with his eyes closed, and then focused on Gina.

‘It's not my fault,' Gina said, over and over again. ‘I'm as upset as you are. I love Dan too, remember.'

‘Love!' Vi snorted, trying to tug her hand free. ‘Love! What do you know about love, except how to love yourself, I'd like to know?'

Gina made her scrambled eggs on toast, but she wouldn't eat them. She said the eggs were too set. Gina offered to make some more but she flared up at the wastefulness of the suggestion and then scraped her plate ostentatiously into the kitchen wastebin. It was an interminable evening. Vi rang the hospital constantly, demanding to know how Dan was. He was asleep, the ward sister said, he would probably now sleep till morning, they'd given him a little sedative. Don't ring again till the morning, Mrs Sitchell, don't worry yourself, he's fine, you get a good night's sleep.

‘Cow,' Vi said, crashing down the phone.

‘Why don't you believe her?' Gina said. ‘Why don't you believe what she says about Dan and go to bed? She's the professional, she's on the spot. She knows.'

‘He hates it in there!' Vi shouted. ‘Can't you see? He hates it. It humiliates him among all those ga-ga old wrecks. Why should he be there? Why should he have to stay there and be treated like a baby? “Dan, darling”, that nurse called him. Could have sloshed her, patronizing madam. I'll look after him, I will! Let him come home where he belongs and I'll look after him!'

Gina got her finally into the bath and then to bed.

‘I'm not taking me jewellery off. I'm not. S'pose I have to go round there in the middle of the night?'

‘Would you like me to stay? I easily can—'

Vi glared.

‘I see. First Dan's not competent to do what he wants, now I'm not. I've got a perfectly good telephone, haven't I? You take that filthy drink away and you scarper. I'll ring you in the morning.'

Gina stooped over her. She smelled of distress and Red Roses dusting powder.

‘I wish you'd let me stay, I don't want you to be by yourself—'

Vi closed her eyes.

‘But I do.'

‘You promise you'll ring—'

Vi nodded. Beside her bed, in the clutter of nail-varnish bottles, portable radio, embroidery things and bags of sweets, was a photograph of Dan, taken perhaps two years ago, jaunty in a summer linen jacket. Behind it was a bigger frame, a double one, with a picture of Gina and Sophy taken in the garden at High Place. Both of them wore big smiles and big straw hats. There was no photograph of Fergus. Gina kissed Vi's cheek.

‘Try and sleep.'

Vi grunted.

‘He'll be home soon. Promise.'

Outside, in Orchard Street, the air, after the hospital and Vi's little house, smelled wonderful. Gina stood for a moment, in the quiet, glimmering summer darkness, and breathed it in. She had telephoned Sophy earlier in the evening, to explain where she was, and about Dan, and Sophy had asked if she could go and see him.

‘I don't think so. Not until tomorrow.'

‘Gran, then. I'll come round to Gran's.'

‘I'm going to try and settle her,' Gina said. ‘She's awfully angry and confused. Perhaps it would be better to wait till the morning. Till she's had some sleep, till the shock's worn off a bit.'

‘In that case,' Sophy said, sounding cold and cross, ‘if I'm not allowed to see
anyone
, I'll go to the cinema. With George.'

‘Darling, I'm not trying to stop you, I'm only thinking of them, I'm just—'

‘Don't worry,' Sophy said in the same voice, ‘I'll go to the cinema. And I'll probably sleep here.' She put the telephone down then.

‘Is that Sophy?' Vi had said.

‘Yes—'

‘Is she coming? Is she coming round?'

Gina fought the desire to defend herself by saying Sophy was going to the cinema, won and said not, actually, until the morning.

‘What'd you tell her?' Vi said, sharp with suspicion.

Gina turned her face up to the sky. It was deep, gauzy blue and scattered with stars. She never knew what they were, had never learned despite Fergus's fascination with the constellations. She felt absolutely drained and yet restless, and the thought of going back to High Place and letting herself into its quiet, clean, empty spaces was tremendously unappealing.

‘Drop in when you're passing,' Laurence had said. ‘Any time.'

She peered at her wristwatch, its dial glowing in the faint light like a tiny echoing moon. Half-past eleven. Was that any time? And what about Hilary, severe with fatigue at the end of another long day . . . Perhaps she would just walk past The Bee House, and look in and see if there were still any signs of life, lights on, people in the bar spinning out their last drinks while Don polished glasses and beer taps with meaningful finality. If there was a glimmer of life, she would venture in; if there wasn't, she would go home and finish making the toast she had embarked upon nine hours before.

From the street, only one light shone on the ground floor, the spotlight above the bar which illuminated a painting a guest had once done, a not very good water-colour of The Bee House garden showing the long wall – all out of perspective – with the bee boles set in it and darkly shadowed. Gina peered in. The tables were cleared, the bar grilles were down and a black plastic bag of rubbish sagged by the door down to the kitchen, waiting to be taken away in the morning. There was a line of light under the door to the kitchen. Gina went round into the yard at the side of the building and saw that some of the kitchen lights were on, throwing great oblongs of pale colour on to the cobbles the Victorians had laid, square and even and blue-grey. She stood outside one of the oblongs of light and looked in.

Laurence and Hilary were in there, sitting either side of the big central table with its battery of knives sunk in slots down the middle. Laurence had a glass of wine in front of him and Hilary a mug of something. Her hands were folded round it and her spectacles were pushed up on top of her head, ruffling her short hair like thick dark feathers. Laurence was still in his chef's apron – he never wore full whites – over his usual clothes. All around them the kitchen lay tidy and quiet, a tray of eggs ready for the morning at Hilary's elbow.

Gina stepped forward to the kitchen door and knocked. There was a sudden little silence and then the sound of a chair being pushed back and Laurence's footsteps.

‘Who is it?'

‘Me,' Gina said. ‘Gina.'

‘Good God,' Laurence said, throwing the door open. ‘Are you all right?'

‘Yes,' she said, blinking at the light. ‘It's Mum,
really. I'm sorry to come so late but it's been a bit of a day and I felt I couldn't go home—'

Hilary got up, settling her red spectacles on her nose. She came forward and gave Gina a quick kiss on the cheek.

‘What's up?'

‘It's Dan. Poor old Dan. Something to do with his heart. He fainted and Mum found him, pretty groggy and not able to remember anything much. He's in hospital and Mum's in as bad a state about that as she is about him being ill. It's taken me all evening to get her to bed.'

Hilary held the kettle up.

‘Tea?'

‘Or wine,' Laurence said. ‘The end of a very nice bottle of South African Merlot. Poor old Dan. Poor Vi, too.'

‘It's all right,' Gina said, ‘I'm not staying. I just wanted to see someone, for a moment.'

Laurence put his hands on her shoulders and pushed her down into the chair Hilary had occupied.

‘Don't talk daft. Of course you're staying, at least long enough to drink a glass of something. We were only having a parental anxiety about George.'

‘Let's be honest,' Hilary said, putting the kettle down. ‘
I
was. You were just wombling about as usual saying don't bully him, let him decide. But he doesn't know
what
to decide, can't you see? He needs our help, he needs suggestions.' She glanced at Gina. ‘What did they say was the matter?'

Gina said, ‘Something to do with the aortic valve.'

‘But he didn't have angina, did he?'

‘I don't think so—'

‘Odd,' Hilary said, and then, in an instructive tone, ‘It's serious, you know.'

Laurence slid a glass of red wine towards Gina.

‘Don't,' she said. ‘I've been trying to persuade Mum of the opposite all evening.'

‘Even only twenty-five years ago,' Hilary said, ‘anyone with aortic disease might be advised not to marry.'

‘Hil,' Laurence said gently, admonishingly.

She gave him a quick look.

‘They love each other,' Gina said suddenly. ‘They really do.'

‘Yes.'

‘Mum yelled at everyone in the hospital. Then at me. She's
terrified
.'

‘Of course.'

Hilary came forward and leaned on her hands on the table. She yawned.

‘So's poor old George in his way. Terrified of not knowing what he wants, of not being anything, becoming anything. I'm really sorry about Dan. And Vi, of course.'

‘Yes.'

‘I'm awfully sorry too,' Hilary went on, ‘but I'm dropping. Quite apart from George, we have some pure horrors in number two, all smarm on the surface, but relentlessly complaining. They're here for a week and nothing's ever right, with all the grizzles wrapped up in “I do hope it's not too much trouble to change rooms, or pillow, or bath-towel size or bedside-lamp wattage or morning-tea variety”. I'd really rather they were rude.' She leaned sideways and put an arm briefly round Gina's shoulders. ‘I have to go to bed. You stay and talk to Laurence. And try not to worry. Everything will look better in the morning.'

‘I'm not staying long,' Gina said. ‘Promise. I just needed an interval between Mum and High Place.'

Hilary blew them both an approximate kiss, and went out of the kitchen, letting the weighted door
swing to behind her. Laurence untied his apron and threw it over a nearby chair. Then he sat down opposite Gina, as he had been sitting opposite Hilary.

‘It's pitiful. It's one of the best relationships I know. They just love each other for what they are, not for what they need or want.'

‘I know.'

‘Are you jealous?'

Gina turned her glass by its stem.

‘Yes. I suppose I am, in a way. I know Mum deserves it after the life she's had, but she's so impossible in so many ways and Dan isn't put off by anything. He just cried when he saw her in the hospital.'

Laurence spread his hands out on the table and looked at them critically, as if they were someone else's hands altogether, and he had been asked to assess them.

‘They've got their priorities right.' He glanced away from his hands at Gina. ‘How're you doing?'

She smiled.

‘Quite well. Tiny bit better most of the time, except for Sophy where I haven't even started, being paralysed with terror about getting it wrong and then alienating or damaging her.'

‘Rather as I feel about George. It's so hard being young now. You'd think having a thousand choices made you free as a bird but in practice it seems to be only alarming and confusing.'

Gina said, ‘He's so sweet.'

‘George?'

‘Yes. George.'

Laurence smiled with a deep pleasure.

‘Yes, he is, isn't he? Sweet. Probably that's what makes him vulnerable. Adam's much less sweet, and although he makes us furious we don't agonize over him the same way.'

‘We were like them not very long ago. Don't you remember? Resenting our parents, hating home, determined to do everything in a new, fresh, imaginative way and sure that we could. My counsellor always wants me to look forward but I think that sometimes you have to look back just to remind yourself where the story began, how things came to be.'

‘The story—'

‘Yes.'

She picked her wine glass up and took a swallow. Laurence watched her.

‘We've got a story. Haven't we?'

He said nothing.

‘I mean,' Gina said, ‘that when I'm desperate, when I don't know where to turn, I come to you. Don't I? Because we go back a long way, because I trust you. I suppose it's an instinct to come to you.'

She looked across at him and she smiled.

He said, ‘You've had such a rough time—'

‘I think maybe you're the only person—'

‘No.'

‘You're so kind, Laurence,' Gina said. ‘Such a kind man. You always have been. Kindness is such a lovely quality in a man.'

He stood up and looked down at her. She looked back at him.

‘Could I ask you something?'

‘Anything—'

‘Would you – would you hold me? Just for a moment?'

He came round the table, holding his hands out to her. She stood up, ignoring his hands, and put her hands on his shoulders. He looked down at her, at her dark head and brows and lashes, at her arms with the thin silver bracelets, and considered her. He had known her all those years, how she looked, how she
thought and felt and behaved, a whole catalogue of facts that you do know, almost by osmosis, about another person over long years, facts that he, Laurence, had known fondly but unexcitedly, for ever. And as he looked down at her, he felt all those facts that he knew, and all those things he could observe, cohere in his heart most powerfully and mingle with his relief at her appreciation of him and the sheer pleasure of feeling her there in his arms until he could hardly breathe.