The Last Weekend (27 page)

‘We talked. It all came out. She knows about the tumour.’

‘When was this?’ I said.

‘Earlier. On the beach.’

Had she spoken to Daisy on the beach? I thought the figures arm in arm in the mist were Daisy and Milo.

‘Christ. I told you not to tell her.’

‘I didn’t. She knew already.’

I sat down on the bed.

‘Ollie told me she didn’t know,’ I said.

‘Daisy can’t understand that. Are you sure you heard him right?’

I replayed Ollie’s remark on the fairway, the bit about being given his cards. Then the conversation in the pub garden: the crisps, the wasps, ‘My Generation’ pounding — and the terrible prognosis.

‘I swear that’s what he said,’ I said.

‘Anyway, the point is she does know and it’s not as bad as Ollie says.’

‘Of course it’s bad. It’s terminal.’
‘According to the consultant, the tumour’s low-grade and slow-growing. And there’s a fifty-fifty chance that it’s benign. They’re doing more tests next week.’

‘Ollie told me he was dying. Why would he lie?’

‘He’s in a panic. Anyone would be.’

‘Stop sticking up for him,’ I said. I stared at the window-pane, and the mummified fly in the spider’s web. ‘The lying fucker.’

‘I thought you’d be pleased.’

‘Of course I’m pleased. It’s just … If he’s not dying, why is Daisy marrying him?’

‘What’s that got to do with anything?’ she said, feeling my brow as if I was the sick one.

‘It must be a precaution. In case it
is
terminal. To keep things simple with the will and so on. And because she feels sorry for him.’

‘You’re being so weird about this,’ Em said. ‘It’s like you
want
him to die.’

‘Don’t be stupid.’

‘You’re supposed to be his friend. He’s frightened. He needs your support.’

It was true. I ought to be kind to him. But he had lied.

‘I’m all sweaty,’ I said, pulling my T-shirt off.

‘That’s how I like you. Climb into bed.’

‘There’s no lock on the door.’

‘So?’

‘Milo’s kids are running around.’

‘I thought you wanted to make love. What else did you come up for?’

‘To see how you were. And change for dinner.’

‘It’s only a barbecue.’

‘Even so.’

I pulled away. She shrugged, giving up on me.

‘Put that nice green shirt on,’ she said. ‘No, not in the suitcase. The one hanging up.’

In my struggle to open the mirrored door, one of Em’s dresses fell on the shoes in the bottom of the wardrobe.

‘Not yours I take it?’ I said, picking up a shrivelled black brogue.

‘Yes, I saw those,’ Em laughed. ‘They’ll be Mr Quarles’s. His stuff is everywhere. I don’t think he’s touched anything since the accident. No wonder the place feels spooky.’

‘You’re not really spooked, are you?’ I said, putting the shoe back and grabbing my shirt. ‘We
could
leave, if you are.’

‘I’d feel better if you got in bed and gave me a cuddle.’

Relenting, I slid in beside her. A cuddle was all I intended, but Em had other ideas. Her skin felt hot and the familiar scent had the familiar effect. She was my wife, for God’s sake. Why feel guilty towards Daisy? Especially when the bitch was being so cold.

We were quiet in case the girls came up.

There can’t have been much of me, after last night, but I came.

She smiled as I buttoned my shirt. That’s when I knew she must be ovulating.

‘I’d better go down,’ I said. ‘Ollie will be looking for me.’

‘Be nice to him. Whether he’s dying or not, he isn’t well.’

The act might be over but when your foreskin’s moist with cunt the act will be fresh on your mind. It was certainly on mine as I walked downstairs.

I’ll be honest with you. Sex with Em hasn’t been easy of late. Not for the past couple of years, in fact, since she started trying for children. We’re rarely apart and sex is important to us both. It seems unfair, in the circumstances, that we haven’t produced a child. Unfair on Em, anyway. To me what’s
unfair isn’t failing to conceive but the damage to our sex life: the thermometers and ‘impregnation-efficient positions’ and the worry whether we’re doing it too often or not enough.
It’s no one’s fault,
they tell us at the fertility clinic, but we’ve both suffered from a feeling of inadequacy. For Em it has been harder. She’s a woman. And though the initial diagnosis was ‘non-specific infertility', she naturally blamed herself.

Sometimes the pressure gets to us. A few days before Badingley she laid into me when I returned late after dropping off at the pub (less for a beer than for the slots and fruits).

‘Childlessness suits you just fine, doesn’t it?’ she began. ‘If you were a dad, coming home late every night would be more tricky. You’re afraid of losing your freedom.’

‘Don’t be like this.’

‘I’m being myself. This is me.’

‘We’ve discussed it before.’

‘Yes, but we never get anywhere, do we?’

For an answer I took her upstairs.

‘Would I be doing this if I didn’t want children?’

It worked, after a fashion. But Em still believes I’m holding out on her, as though willing us to remain infertile.

I’d be a liar if I said my performance hasn’t been affected. Men these days are encouraged to be soft — except in bed, where we have to be hard.
Be gentle, be tough, kiss me, boss me, respect me, enter me
— the mixed messages are sometimes too much. I lose confidence, lose patience, lose desire.

Em blames herself, of course. She worries about putting on weight (not in the way she’d like to put on weight) and fears I’m no longer attracted to her. It makes life difficult for us both. None of it would have arisen but for the issue, or non-issue, of kids.

Ollie was next to the fireplace in the living room, a tumbler of whisky in his hand, inspecting the two crossed swords.

‘I thought they were decorative,’ he said. ‘But feel that blade. They could do some serious damage. Want one?’

He meant a whisky, not a sword, and I nodded.

‘Come through,’ he said. ‘There’s a choice of malts.’

I had not been in the dining room since the first day and had almost forgotten it — easily done, since the door matched the design of the oak panelling in the corridor: once it was shut, you would never know the room was there. As a child, I’d loved adventure stories which featured secret chambers and used to comb our terraced house in search of one; now, decades later, I’d found it. An old drinks cabinet, with a mirrored interior and walnut surround, stood in the corner. Ollie pulled out a dining chair and gestured for me to sit down. The walls were a lurid violet and the brick floor smelled of mushrooms. But the room felt colder than the rest of the house, which was a relief.

‘Thank you for being frank earlier,’ Ollie said, closing the door. ‘I can’t be doing with evasions any more. It’s all too late for that.’

Less of the too late, I thought. It was the moment to call his bluff, to say I knew, that Daisy had told Em, that his claim to be dying was a lie. But could Daisy be trusted? Suppose he
was
dying and she didn’t want us to know. Or that she’d convinced herself he wasn’t dying in order to feel less guilty about fucking Milo. If she was fucking Milo. The possibilities were endless.

The malt tasted good — a Glenmorangie, twenty years old, tanged with bitterness.

‘You’ve set me thinking,’ he said.

‘Forget what I said.’

‘Milo and Daisy are too fond of each other, you implied. What’s the evidence?’

‘I probably imagined it. Em says I have a dirty mind.’

‘Imagined what? Stop protecting me, Ian. There’s more to this.’

I swirled the whisky in my glass and thought of the malt-brown North Sea, how even the clearest sky can’t turn it blue.

I looked at him and drew breath.

‘I’ll tell you, if it’s bothering you, but I’m sure it’s nothing. Last night, after you’d gone to bed, I took the dog for a walk, and when I came back Daisy was lying on the sofa, looking dishevelled. She seemed rather put out to see me.’

‘Where was Milo?’

‘I don’t know. He probably heard me coming in and went off to bed.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘They’d been talking. He’d told her about his marriage breaking up and how he planned to move to New York, and she was upset.’

‘Daisy cries easily.’

‘Yes, and she obviously had been crying. I fetched her some water while she straightened her clothes.’

‘Why would her clothes need straightening?’

‘No reason. I’m not suggesting she’d been up to anything.’

‘What
are
you saying?’

‘Nothing. Daisy loves you, not Milo.’

‘You mean they’re having an affair?’

‘No way. She might have a crush on him but she wouldn’t act on it. Not lightly. I should have kept my mouth shut. My dream life’s disgusting.’

‘What have dreams to do with it?’

‘Well, that’s the other thing. I shouldn’t tell you, it’s embarrassing — but after Daisy had gone off to bed I went through to see Rufus, and I was so tired I ended up falling asleep on the rug beside him, and next thing there were voices, as if
Milo had come back down, and then — sorry, this is ridiculous — I heard two people having sex.’

‘Fucking hell.’

‘No, but the point is it was only a dream. When I woke up and went through no one was there. I imagined the whole thing.’

‘Maybe you overheard them in your sleep.’

‘There’d have been evidence. Stains on the sofa or tissues in the waste bin. Trust me. Nothing happened except in my head. I apologise for bringing it up. Can I have another malt, please?’

You will think me a bad person, and sometimes I think so too. But it was true about the dream. So much had happened I’d forgotten it till then. After falling asleep next to Rufus, that’s what I dreamt, the sweet memory of making love to Daisy coursing through me but with Milo in my place. I couldn’t tell Ollie the whole truth. And if the dream hadn’t come back at that moment, I would have refrained from telling him. But nor did I invent it. I’m not a monster.

Having said that, as we sat there in the cold little room I can’t deny a certain satisfaction in seeing Ollie suffer. I’ve not spent my life in jealousy, but it did briefly poison my existence. And since Ollie was to blame for that, it was only right that he know how it felt.

I was avenging myself on Daisy, too. She might have been cold and aloof on the beach but she’d slept with me willingly enough the night before, and her eagerness, her sluttish enthusiasm, made me wonder how many other men she’d had before me. If Ollie now suspected her, that was only just. Suspicion is what she deserved.

‘If it’s true, I don’t blame her,’ he said, his back to me as he stood at the drinks cabinet.

‘How do you mean?’

‘I’ve not been easy to live with. It evens things up.’

I looked at him quizzically as he handed me the malt but he avoided my eyes, as if to say
Let’s leave it at that.
Was he saying he’d had mistresses? Or that he’d made life difficult for her in other ways? I’d no time to digest it before he spoke again.

‘Did I say when I showed you round?’ he said, gesturing to the four walls. ‘This is the room they brought my father to. Before they took him to the morgue.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Surely I told you about his death.’

‘You told me he died when you were twelve. You never said how.’

‘He drowned. While we were on holiday here. When they recovered the body, they brought him to this room and laid him out.’

He gripped the table edge, as if the solid wood between his fingers and thumb would somehow authenticate the story.

‘God,’ I said, playing along, ‘how awful.’

‘I remember my mother and me standing here. The oilskin they’d wrapped him in smelled of fish. There was a tiny strand of seaweed in his hair that made me think they must have dredged him from the seabed. But they found the body three miles out to sea. As if he’d set off to swim to Denmark and got into trouble. As if he’d been trying to escape us.’

I tried to remember when Ollie had first told me about his father dying. Before he met Daisy or after? Probably after. The word ‘tragedy’ would have made her feel sorry for him, just as his tales of Sandhurst made her think him brave. Hero and victim: no wonder she’d fallen under his spell. But to me he’d spoken only of a sudden death, as if from a heart attack or stroke, not a drowning. Of course, I wanted to believe he was telling the truth. But there was something opportunistic
about it. Plagiaristic, too: only that morning Mr Quarles had described losing his family in the North Sea. I’d not been there but Em said it was the saddest story. Now Ollie in his usual way was trying to cap it.