The First Wife (17 page)

Al called, a week after my birthday.

‘When are you going to get a mobile?’ he demanded. ‘You’re the only person in the world I can’t text.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I know. I’m fully out of step with the modern world. Harry says I could get a pay-as-you-go one.’ ‘Ask him to get you one.’

‘Al! I’ll get my own, thank you very much.’ Then I relented. ‘Actually, he said the other day that he’s got an old handset he’ll hook up for me, but I’ll be doing my own paying as I go, thanks.’

‘Hang on,’ Al said. ‘Rewind a moment. “Harry says?” So you really did stroll off into the sunset? One day you’re bailing on all your mates to walk across the beach with him, and then he takes you out on your birthday, you vanish, and a week later he’s giving you a phone? I think I can fill in the blanks there. You having fun?’

I sighed happily. ‘So much fun, Al. I had no idea.’

‘It’d be nice to see you. Have you got any time for the man who once stopped you flinging yourself into the harbour?’

‘Of course I have.’

‘How are you handling your alcohol these days?’

‘Better and better, thanks.’

‘So, let me buy you a birthday sherry.’

The pub was a proper old-style one, with a mixed clientèle incorporating students, fishermen, and everyone in between. All the outside tables were taken. Al had managed to keep a whole one for us, though I could see some girls nearby looking at him and giggling. He was good-looking enough for that; beautiful enough that even when he was not happy, even when the horrors of his past were visible in his eyes, everyone, male and female, was attracted to him.

Everything around us was lit up by the golden evening sunlight. There were tips of gold on every little wave out there. Across the mouth of the estuary, the grassy hills around St Mawes were bucolic and peaceful.

Al grinned as he saw me approaching. A glint of gold was shining in the sunlight, on his face.

‘You got your nose pierced,’ I pointed out, staring at it. ‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘Why not? On impulse. Showing Boris I’ve still got a bit of wildness in my old heart.’

I tried to imagine having an impulse like that. ‘Wow.’

‘Happy Birthday,’ he said, handing me a Tesco bag. ‘You remember me, right?’

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘And sorry. But I’ve only been seeing Harry for a week, and you’ve been devoted to Boris for
ever
.’ I was excited, my heart fluttering around, because I knew that, from now on, I would get to talk about Harry just as much as Al always got to talk about Boris. I opened the bag. It contained a bottle of expensive sherry, a Smarties cake, and a Camembert.

‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘What a fantastic present. You shouldn’t have spent that money on me though.’

‘I’ll get you whatever I want to get you, thanks very much.’

‘I appreciate it. If we weren’t in a pub, I’d open the sherry, you know. Actually, it’s the most thoughtful present anyone could have got me. And how long has that cheese been in there?’

‘It’s meant to be smelly,’ he explained, ‘so it doesn’t matter.’

‘Thanks, Al.’ I leaned forward and kissed his cheek. ‘So, what’s going on with you? How’s Lover Boy?’

‘Which Lover Boy would that be? You need to narrow it down a bit.’

I frowned. ‘Boris. Are there others?’

‘Of course not. It was a joke. Obviously not a very funny one. I don’t want to talk about him. Wifey is trying to make him come back and I’m terrified he might actually go. Can’t stop myself coming on too strong. I can see in his eyes that I’m scaring him off.’

‘She wants him
back?’

‘The stuff with the solicitors has been getting nasty. I didn’t mind that. I thought it was good for him to see the vindictive cow for what she is.’

‘Al!’

‘Sorry. But really. He’s been hating it, and then when she called and asked to meet for a drink so they could talk things through, he couldn’t wait to go. I knew then that we were in dangerous waters. After threatening seven types of shit, never seeing his kids again, homophobic abuse, all of that going through the lawyers, in real life she was dewy-eyed and “offering chances” left right and centre. “For the children’s sake”. She got to him.’

I knew Al quite well by now.

‘You spied on them, didn’t you?’

‘Mistake. He spotted me. So now I look like a possessive wanker, we’re barely speaking, and I know, I just
know,
he’s going back to her.’ He rolled his eyes. ‘And that was me
not
talking about Boris. You should hear me when I do talk about him.’

‘Al,’ I said, ‘People can be very strange.’

‘Tell me about it. How come you’re not, though? You lived with old people. They probably had some old-fashioned attitudes. You ought to think I’m a vile pervert, like that woman does.’

‘Well, I don’t, and I never did for a moment.’ I thought about it. ‘My grandparents were old, obviously, but people have always been gay. You don’t have to be prejudiced, just because you’re old. In fact, it’s rather ageist to think so. They were completely liberal in their attitudes, and anyway, their bookcases were full of gay writers. I’ve read E.M. Forster, Alan Hollinghurst . . .’

‘I missed you, Lily. You’re really coming out of yourself. It’s been fun to watch.’

‘Thank you.’

He paused. ‘Look, shoot me down over this. I know you will. But . . .’

‘But?’

‘Well, you need to keep pushing forwards. You’re working every hour, you should save as much as you can, get yourself to college. You keep saying you’re going to college. It’s July. Term starts in September. You should be doing it now. Right now, this instant, before the summer term ends. I know you’ve only been seeing him for five minutes, and it’s sunny and sexy and it’s a bit of fun. But – well, take my advice and
don’t
settle down with some old guy with a dead wife. He’ll want you to be his second wife. You would be a coup for him, and you can’t see it. You deserve more than that.’

I laughed. ‘Al! I’ve never been out with anyone before. I’m happy.’ I looked hard at him. ‘Be glad for me. Let me have some fun before you start telling me off. But you’re right about college. I’ll do it. I’ll sort it out.’

He shook his head, as if dislodging his thoughts. ‘Of course. Sorry, darling. I can’t help feeling protective of you. From the day you stumbled into the CAB, I’ve wanted to keep an eye on you. You just seemed so . . . vulnerable.’

‘Well,’ I said. ‘I’m not any more. I’m so happy I don’t know what to do with myself.’

Jack was in Madrid, but as soon as he got there, he located the train station (with considerable aplomb, he felt, getting the Metro straight there with no wrong turns at all), and bought himself a ticket to Barcelona.

Singapore had been an amazing experience. He could say that in retrospect, now that he wasn’t there any more. In truth, it had been a little bit full-on, and he had let himself take it at his own pace. Taking it at his own pace turned out to mean breakfast in the hotel, an hour’s stroll in the morning, and then back to his room for most of the day with a book or a paper, before an hour’s wander again in the early evening, leading up to the big event of the day: dinner.

It would have been all right with someone else to encourage him and chat to him. On his own he was not as intrepid as he had liked to imagine himself, back at home, looking at magazines.

He had looked out for other travellers, but they all seemed to be either in tour groups, stepping on and off their air-conditioned buses, or backpackers, hanging together in gangs. Maybe he should have gone the backpacker route himself, saved some cash, met some buddies. Lots of them were his age and older. He had a vague idea that they were sleeping in flea-infested hovels, sharing bunk beds, eleventy to a room.

As he stood in a queue at Madrid’s Atocha station, surrounded by people yelling in Spanish that was so fast that he knew none of his careful memorising of phrases counted for anything, he winced. It was the word ‘eleventy’ flicking through his mind that did it. His kids used that word. Sarah-Jane thought it was hilarious. Eleventy. It meant lots, and it was a made-up number. That was enough to keep Sarah-J and Aidan in stitches for hours at a time.

‘How old are you, Dad? Are you eleventy? Are you eleventy
hundred
?’ they would demand.

‘Feels that way,’ he would usually agree.

And here he was in Spain, as far from his kids as he could possibly have been. He knew no one in this country, no one on this continent. Anita, the nice woman from the plane, was the closest thing he had to a friend, and she was in London, which was apparently hundreds of miles away. She’d given him her number and offered to take him out for a drink if he ever came to London. He might have to buy himself a ticket to Gatwick or Heathrow (he was proud of his new-found knowledge of London’s airports), just so he could speak to someone he knew.

Yes, he should have done Singapore like a backpacker. He was twenty-nine, not eleventy-nine. Instead he had shut himself in a bland hotel room and read his Spanish guide yet again. He was glad he was going to be doing his TEFL in Barcelona. It had the best write-up.

He reached the front of the queue.

‘Un boleto para Barcelona, por favor,’
he said slowly, ‘
a
las once, por favor,’
not really able to believe that this would get him the piece of paper he needed. A ticket was passed his way. He handed over some cash and waited to be elated by his success. And waited some more. The travelling lark was not quite the joyous experience he had expected it to be. Perhaps Barcelona would grab him by the scruff of his neck and force him to enjoy himself.

The train was clean, and his reserved seat was next to the window. He settled down with the crisps and chocolate he had bought at the station, put his
Rough Guide
and one of the novels he’d picked up at Christchurch airport, a place he was already thinking of with fond regret, into the pocket of the seat in front of him. He waited. People strode purposefully up and down the train, talking loudly and incomprehensibly. He would just stay here, get through the journey. At some point, he would probably have to get up and locate the toilet facilities, but apart from that, he would sit it out until he got there. Then he would be able to send an email home saying:
I spent a couple of days in Singapore, flew to Madrid and took a train to Barcelona.
It would sound damn good to the folks at home. They would be impressed by him. His mean old dad. Rachel. The kids. All of them would be surprised at how cool and capable he was. None of them ever needed to know that he was cowering away from actually experiencing any of it, surrounding himself with an invisible force field, avoiding eye-contact with anybody. They thought he was brave, and he was the only one in the world who knew how scared he was.

The language school had arranged somewhere for him to stay. That was, he knew, the best bit of luck he’d had yet. As he stepped off the train and fought his way through the station, he held a piece of paper in his hand, and that piece of paper had his new address on it.

He headed for the exit of the station, Barcelona Sants, so he could have a little look around. It was unlikely, really, that he was going to find the apartment, with its strange forward slashes and rows of numbers, right here. Not bang outside the main train station. That would be too much to ask. Still, it was worth checking, just in case.

Five short days ago he was squeezing goodbye to Sarah-Jane, Aidan and little LeEtta, giving Rachel a peck on the cheek and a manly handshake to his bitter old dad. Now he was very tired indeed and all he could think about, in this strange new continent, was sleeping.

There was a girl walking past him, coming into the station as he walked out. He stared at her hard. She was not quite the woman of his imagination: her face was wrong and her hair was too short. All the same, she was closer than a Kiwi girl. She looked casually into his eyes as they passed each other. He smiled and felt a little braver.

Outside the station, it was not at all as he had expected. In the book it was all little alleys with
pintxo
bars (he had been sure to learn the right terminology: it was not called
tapas
here) and old churches. Instead, there were cars everywhere and it was busier and more choked than Christchurch. Lucky he’d been to Singapore on the way, or the crowds might have freaked him out. He stood in the unforgiving sun, on the wide pavement, along with groups of people all waiting for different things, and watched a couple of buses come and go. The cars were nipping all over the place, on the big roads, pretty fast. He hoped his apartment was not around here.

Across a couple of scary roads, he could see a little café. Hitching his backpack onto his shoulders, and reminding himself to look the other way before he crossed, he set off. His mission: to get there without ending up under the wheels of some Spanish Renault or something.

He successfully ordered a
cafe con leche,
and found a table on the pavement away from the shade. He wanted one in the shade, but they were all taken. There were little groups of people all over the place, and lots of them had backpacks like his. He’d been pleased to leave the New Zealand winter and head to the European summer, but now he was thinking a little bit of chilly weather might not go amiss.

With sticky, sweaty fingers, he opened the guide book to the page with the biggest city map he could find, straightened out the piece of paper with his address on it, and looked around for the waiter.

The guy was straight out
of Fawlty Towers.
He was short and a bit bald, with a moustache and a jaded manner.

‘Er,’ said Jack, with his best smile.
‘De
sculpe. Donde esta . . .’

He handed the man the piece of paper and gestured at the map. The man took it with a swift gesture, nodded, then grabbed the book. He looked at the page for a while, then turned to another one. With his ordering pen, he marked a little cross, and handed it back.

‘Metro Arc de Triomf,’ he said, circling the little M on the map. Although he did not smile, Jack was phenomenally grateful. He paid for his coffee, and left the same amount again as a tip. That was why he had saved for six extra months: so he wouldn’t have to scrape by on the money his mother had left him. So he could do friendly things like that for people who helped him out.