The Pillow Friend (32 page)

She tottered a little in her heels and was grateful for his support. “Of course I'm drunk. People kept filling my glass. Aren't you?”

“I would hardly be proposing to drive us home if I were.”

“Well, it was your idea to drive. We could have taken the Tube.” Her drunkenness—which was not as extreme as his distaste implied—had the blessed side effect of insulating her from his disapproval.

“So what were you talking about? You were with her all evening.”

“Mmm. Just stuff. What two American women in London would talk about—Fairy Liquid, parades of shops, roundabouts, free houses . . .” She started laughing.

“Don't take the piss. I have a reason for asking.”

“I'm serious! That's what we talked about. The stately disappointments of England. It all sounds so wonderful and exotic in books and then you come over here and—the language is full of traps. Imagine calling a dishwashing detergent ‘Fairy Liquid'! It sounds like something that would give you eternal life. And parades of shops sounds so gay—like roundabouts—and really they're about the grimmest things imaginable, both of them. And there's nothing free in free houses, and oh, ‘Take Courage'—I love that one, that one ought to be imported to America.”

“It's just an advertising slogan,” he said wearily. “I seem to recall quite a few of those in America.”

“And the signs you see—Refuse Tip. No Football Coaches! I'm not complaining, really. I think it's sweet. I know people say that English and American are two different languages, but you can't really appreciate how true that is until you live here. Alice was saying—”

“Spare me, please. I don't want a blow by blow account of your conversation.”

“Oh, I thought you did. Why did you park so far away? I'm getting soaked.”

“Well, walk faster. I parked as near as I could.”

“I can't walk faster, not in these shoes.”

“Why do women wear such ridiculous shoes?”

“These aren't ridiculous!”

“Then you must be extremely drunk, because you can hardly walk. I hope to Christ you didn't tell that woman anything.”

“Tell her what? State secrets? I don't know any, honest!”

“You don't seem to understand. I do actually have a reputation. And I would like to be known for my work, not my private life, which I like to keep private.”

She spoke very solemnly. “I'm afraid she knows you're married. I did tell her that private detail.”

“She works for my publisher. She would have known you were my wife as soon as she saw us walk in together.”

She glimpsed a possible explanation for his annoyance. “Is she an old girlfriend?”

“I know you're jealous, but that is ridiculous. It may seem to you that I've slept with every woman in Greater London, but, I assure you, I have not. And Alice Keremos is exactly the kind of pushy, neurotic American woman I can't stand. Her idea of small talk is to tell you just how awful various boyfriends of hers were in the sack, or how many orgasms she is capable of, and then she wants your vital statistics in return. I shudder to think what you might have said to her about me in your drunken state.”

“We hardly talked about you at all. And she didn't regale me with details of her sex life, either.” His cruel assessment of her new friend made her angry.

“So what did you talk about with her for so long?”

She remembered a lot of laughter, and touching. Alice was a toucher. Agnes had not been touched, except by Gray, since she had left America, and she had not realized how much she missed the easy, undemanding way her female friends embraced or touched her when they were together. She had no friends here. Alice's fingers on her arm, her arm around her shoulder, her breath on the side of her face when she whispered something confidential, had stirred her longing and also made her feel that their closeness was already a fact, their intimacy long-established. “Oh, we talked about all sorts of things. Did I know anybody from Providence or Boston, did she know anybody in Austin or Houston. Finding out what we had in common.”

“Not much, I'll bet.”

“Quite a lot, actually. She writes, too, you know.”

“Oh yes?”

“She's had two poems published in
The London Magazine.
”

“Really.”

“And she's nice, Gray, really. If you—”

“She's not ‘nice' at all. I'll tell you what she is, she's a vulgar, ambitious star-fucker. There was a big poetry promotion last year, a dozen poets, I was one of them, sent around the country to do readings in schools, libraries, village halls, other venues. She was along, supposed to make sure all went smoothly, and what she did was, she made a dead-set at”— he named a poet slightly better known than himself—“married bloke, I might add. All right, he wasn't blameless, but she was the one who did the running, and he was vulnerable, lonely, away from home, drinking. . . . After the tour she kept after him, and eventually his wife left him, poor bugger, and then she dropped him.” He paused long enough to draw breath and then he went on. “And do you know what she has hanging over her bed? A self-portrait, full-frontal nude. Such bad taste: ‘Here I am, boys.' Unbelievable.”

“How do you know what she has over her bed?”

“It was nothing like that,” he said irritably. “She's my publicity lady—she had a drinks party at her flat—there were lots of people there, it was utterly innocent. I had to use the loo. You had to go through the bedroom to get to it—typical, that.”

She couldn't tell if he meant it was a typical floor plan for a London flat, or if he was implying Alice had designed her living quarters to ensure that all male visitors would have to pass through her bedroom, where she hung the bad-taste portrait as a lure or, perhaps, as warning. She had been feeling angry, but the idiocy of this made her burst out laughing. They had finally reached the car; with relief she let go his supporting arm and fell against the side of the car, howling with laughter.

“You don't believe me,” he said bitterly. “Well, I have no reason to lie. And I'll tell you another thing, although you obviously don't want to hear it. Alice Keremos is no friend of yours. She never will be. She was making up to you at that party as a way of getting closer to me.” He had unlocked her door and now he went around to the other side to let himself in. “Will you get in the car? It's pissing down.”

Alice Keremos was her friend. If there was at first a certain restraint on her part because of Gray's disapproval, it was neither strong nor disagreeable enough to inhibit Alice who, at their first lunchtime meeting, handed over a piece of paper with a name and telephone number on it, and told her to call about a job.

It was only a temporary position, covering for someone on maternity leave, but it meant six months paid experience working for a trendy newish publishing company in London: a business, a city, a field she knew nothing about.

“Why on earth did they hire me?” she demanded of Alice in the wine bar where they met to celebrate. As soon as the initial exhilaration subsided she realized she was terrified.

“They liked you; you impressed them; they thought you were the best person for the job. Fran liked you. That's important. She obviously felt she could work with you. And she will. Don't start thinking you're going to get dumped in it to sink or swim—if I know Fran (and I ought to; we shared a flat for six months) she'll be calling you from the delivery room to check on whether you fixed up an interview with
Time Out
. And . . . don't forget, it's only for six months.”

“You mean even I can't screw things up beyond repair in only six months?”

“I mean,” said Alice, taking her hand across the little
faux
-marble-topped table and squeezing her fingers, “how many people with experience, who are any good, are actually going to be going after a measly maternity leave cover-job? It's a good start for you, a way of getting experience for your next, real, job. You'll learn what you need to in no time, don't worry about it. And if you ever have a question, and you can't get Frannie on the phone, you can always call me.”

Another squeeze of the hand. The public hand-holding embarrassed her, but she didn't like to show it. Having so miraculously stumbled on the two things she most wanted so quickly she was determined to do nothing to risk either the job or the friendship.

Gray didn't really approve of her job, she knew, because of his complex, chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward publishing. He was not one of those poets who had found themselves a comfortable position in either publishing or academia, and his attitude toward those who had was made up of derision, dislike, and jealousy. But at least she wasn't working for
his
publisher, and her job was to promote books, not decide which ones should be published. And anything that made her happy, he said, made him happy. He even, after the friendship appeared to be established, was willing to admit he might have been wrong about Alice Keremos, might have misjudged her, and allowed his wife to invite her to dinner one night. The evening was a success. Gray declared Alice to be, behind her mannerisms, “really rather sweet,” and Agnes glowed with the professional matchmaker's pride.

Time passed quickly now, the days full, tumbling over one another. A life was taking shape around her, very different from her life in Austin, yet just as authentically hers. Occupied, she was happy, with no time for brooding about Caroline. She did not forget her, but was no longer haunted by the other woman and her phantom pregnancy. There were other things to think about. She was meeting people and learning things; weekdays were for working, weekends she had Graham.

One day shortly before Christmas she arrived home from work and sensed someone else in the house. She didn't know how she knew—was it a scent? had she glimpsed some movement through the net curtains at the front window?—but she felt it was someone familiar.

“Graham?” she called, going through to the lounge, then the kitchen. Both rooms were empty, although the cooker was on and she could smell potatoes baking. She went back to the hall and mounted the stairs, not calling his name this time, a little nervous.

There was no one in his office, or their bedroom, yet the feeling persisted: she was not alone.

She heard Graham's key in the lock downstairs just as she saw what was on the bed.

Strips of silk. Long silk scarves. Four black, one white.

“Nancy?” He came bounding up the stairs. “I thought that was you! I was in the off-license when you walked past.”

“Was there somebody here?”

He looked puzzled. “Who? When?”

“I don't know. Just now. Before I got home.”

“I was here until ten minutes ago. I just nipped out to get some fags. No, there's been no one. Why, did you see someone? We haven't had a burglar?”

“No, nothing like that.” She fought her inclination to turn around and stare at the scarves on the bed. She wanted to see his response. “It wasn't that sort of feeling—it was a good feeling I had when I came in, like somebody I knew was here, somebody I'd be really happy to see.”

He made a face. “Not someone like me?” He gave her a quick kiss. “Sorry I wasn't here. I've got to go check the spuds. Come with me.”

That night when she went up to bed he was ahead of her, wearing nothing but a wicked smile. The room was dimly lit; a diaphanous cloth had been draped over the bedside light—she recognized the white silk scarf. The black silks were in a cool heap on the sheet beside him.

“Well, what shall we do with these, you naughty girl?”

She had wondered what it would be like to be tied to a bed with silken cords, to have her hands bound—at her own request—while someone made love to her. She had imagined she would enjoy it, in a scary kind of way, but in fact she didn't like it at all. She was uncomfortable the whole time. She hated not being able to move her arms or legs; the fact that she could not, physically, stop him touching her wherever, however he liked frightened her as much as if he'd been a total stranger. Perhaps he handled her gently, but it seemed brutality to her. She could not relax.

He took no notice when she asked him to untie her.

“Graham, please. I mean it.”

He grinned, running his hands up and down her naked body, pausing briefly to cup her breasts and lightly pinch the nipples.

“Look, I don't like it. Let me go.”

“Maybe I should have used that other scarf to tie your mouth, so you wouldn't keep telling me what to do, hmmm?” His fingers moved teasingly between the legs she could not close.

“Don't!” Couldn't he see that she meant what she said? Unable to stop him any other way, she burst into tears.

At once his grin vanished. He looked baffled at first, then angry. “Jesus, Nancy. What's with you? First you complain I'm inhibited; now, when I try to do something to please you—oh, stop crying, would you? I haven't done anything. I'm letting you go, if I can only get this damn knot . . .”

As soon as she was free, he switched off the light and turned away from her.

“I'm sorry,” she said.

“Yeah.”

“I mean it. Please don't be mad at me—I was scared, that's all.” She turned to embrace him but his back was to her, hunched and unforgiving. “I don't blame you.”

“I should bloody well hope not! I was only doing that because I thought
you'd
like it.”