They Do the Same Things Different There (2 page)

“Oh yes,” he said. “Well, sort of. I mean, I only see him at Christmas.” He dried a couple of cups, and some saucers, and a fork. “I’ll probably miss him at Christmas,” he said.

They carried on washing up for a while. And then something got very confused, because he was supposed to be drying, but now his hands were in the sink as well, he was washing away at the cutlery with the spare sponge. It wasn’t the largest of sinks, so their hands kept on bumping into each other.

“Do you miss him?” asked Dave.

“Oh yes,” said Juliet.

“Do you miss kissing him?” asked Dave.

Juliet thought about this. “I suppose I do,” she said. “Yes.”

“I miss kisses too.”

Juliet said, “But Sheila hasn’t been in Luxembourg,” and Dave said, “I know.” And then his face was all over hers, cheek and neck, and finally he found his way to her lips, and she thought, oh yes, I was right, I
had
been missing this. They dripped soapsuds onto the floor. He pulled away. “Sorry,” he said. “Sorry. I’ve wanted to do that for such a long time. Forgive me. I shan’t do it again.” And he left the kitchen.

That night he phoned her. “Oh, hello,” she said. “Did you make it home okay?”

“I’ve got to see you again,” he whispered at her. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” She supposed that would be all right. He said he’d make it over to her on Saturday, he’d find a reason to be out for the day, just leave it with him. And even though it was now arranged, and this was only Sunday night, he managed to find a reason to call her every night that week to confirm all was still well.

She broke her shopping habit, went out on Friday evening. The supermarket wasn’t as crowded, she wondered why she’d never done it on Fridays before. And she made Dave a nice lunch for when he arrived. He didn’t want her potato salad, though. The first thing he did was to wrap her in his arms and kiss her all over, even before he’d taken his shoes off, even before his coat. Realistically Juliet had known they probably wouldn’t draw the line at kissing, and there might be a bit of sex involved. She just wasn’t prepared for how much. “Oh God, I’ve missed this!” he shouted out, sometime during the fifth bout. And Juliet said she’d missed it too, and she meant it, but she thought to herself she hadn’t missed it quite enough to
shout
about. Dave looked just like Colin, but they felt so very different; Juliet had imagined that in the dark she could have pretended they were one and the same, fair exchange, no robbery—but his hands were all over her, she wasn’t sure where he’d want to touch next, and it wasn’t in the dark, was it, even with the curtains drawn the sunlight was streaming in, she could see
everything
. And that was a bit disconcerting at first, and not necessarily all that pleasant, but it lent a definite thrill to the proceedings. Around half past five he said he’d have to head home now, it was a long drive ahead, and Saturday traffic was probably rubbish. And she surprised herself by actually minding. “Don’t go,” she said, “not just yet,” and, uselessly, “I’ve got potato salad in the kitchen.” “Can we do this again?” he asked her. “We’ve got to do this again.” “Oh yes,” she said. “I bloody love you,” he said, and kissed her, and drove away, and although she decided it’d be better to ignore that last bit, it replayed in her head a lot over the following week.

The next Saturday she didn’t bother with the potato salad. She’d had a good think about what she should be feeling during the sex, about how much pleasure there ought to be—and she was able to get that right, she was very proud of herself, she’d caught the expression exactly. And then it occurred to her—my God!—she really
was
enjoying it, without having to consciously try. That made her panic a bit, she was lying there next to Dave when she realized that Colin was fading away, he’d been there in her head but now he was disappearing, how could he just disappear like that? This was grief, she thought, finally it was here, and she wasn’t sure when she cried out whether it was out of relief or the sudden loss knotted in her stomach. And Dave hadn’t known why she’d cried out either, but he held her tight, he held her until she felt better and he told her that he loved her. He was using the “love” word quite a lot. She told him once in a while not to be silly, and he said it wasn’t silly, the last thing in the world it was was silly, it was
love
, didn’t she deserve to be loved? And she asked him if he didn’t love Sheila. It wasn’t meant to be accusatory, but he went very quiet. He told her he had loved Sheila, of course he had, but that love had just gone. He didn’t know where. It didn’t make sense. How could something as important as love just fade away? What could it be worth if it could vanish so easily and without cause? So Juliet said that maybe he’d feel the same about her one day, and he denied that, he said this was a different kind of love, this one was solid. They had sex again after that. And then he got a bit tired, and asked whether she had anything to eat. He was bloody starving! And she wished she’d made the potato salad after all.

“I’ve told Sheila all about us,” he said one Saturday. “We’re getting a divorce.” Juliet wasn’t entirely sure that she wanted him leaving his wife for her sake—she’d only just got used to the idea of feeling grief and feeling pleasure without now having to feel guilt as well. Dave assured her it was all right. Sheila was pretty angry, and his mother was absolutely furious for some reason, Juliet might want to avoid answering the phone for a bit. But this was good, they’d no longer be living a lie, and better still, he could now spend all weekend with her. Friday evening to Sunday! He’d stay all week, of course, but his office was in Leatherhead, he could drop his marriage but not his job, that’d be silly. And it worked fine for a while. He wouldn’t want sex the minute he got through the front door any longer, there was no need, they had all the time in the world now. He’d help her with the shopping on Saturdays, in the evening they might watch a movie. Then they’d make love, and it was fairly good, but Juliet couldn’t help but notice it was getting that bit more perfunctory, the hands weren’t quite so keen to explore, they stayed pretty much north of the equator. Colin hadn’t been a passionate man, but he’d had his moments, it had taken two years of marriage before the sex had got stale. With Dave it had taken a little under three months. Juliet supposed it was her fault, she must just suck the spirit out of people. And she didn’t
want
Dave to be like Colin, she didn’t want to think of Colin at all. But it was like prodding a sore tooth, she couldn’t help it, she knew Dave was so close to being his brother—she watched for the grey hairs, she put extra mayonnaise in the potato salad to fatten him up. And already as she lay beside him in bed, as they shopped, watched DVDs, she thought, he may not be Colin, but Colin Mark II could be seen peeping through. “I love you,” he’d tell her, so bloody often, and she’d believe him, but she’d choose half the time not to hear. “Let’s have a baby,” he said to her, “a baby of our very own.” “But you’ve got Tim,” she said. “Fuck Tim,” he said. “I want a son with you.” And he worked hard at that, Colin had never wanted a child, that made Dave different, didn’t it? Didn’t it? After they’d put the work in, he’d fall asleep and she’d lie in his arms. How long would he stay with her? How long could he love her? She’d started dreaming of turning on the news one weekday morning, and finding that Leatherhead was in the headlines, that Leatherhead had vanished from the face of the earth. And that’s what she wanted, too; she wanted Leatherhead to fade away, and take Dave with it, just so she’d know, just so she’d finally
know
it was over and done with. She was practising already in front of the bathroom mirror,—she was practising her grief, this time she knew just how she was going to do all those reactions. And although he hadn’t vanished yet, he hadn’t done a Luxembourg on her, as she cuddled next to his sleeping body she began to mourn. “I love you,” she said. “Oh God, I love you.” And she began to cry. This is grief, she thought, I’m getting
so
good at this! It hurt so much. If only he’d disappear.

But Leatherhead didn’t disappear. And Luxembourg came back.

Mrs. Wilson said she’d seen something on the news about it last night, hadn’t Juliet heard? She was surprised, she’d always thought Juliet considered herself quite the Luxembourg expert. Juliet didn’t believe her, but one of the girls at the checkout till confirmed it. Juliet asked if she could take her lunch break early, just to go and check, and Mrs. Wilson said she didn’t think anyone could be seen to be taking lunch at half past ten, it’d set an unfortunate precedent. And Juliet thought, sod it, and it made her feel good to think that, and she went out to her car anyway, without permission, and drove home. She turned on her mobile, and Dave was there, he’d left four messages, “Phone me,” he said, and, “We have to talk.” So she called him from the car. “You’ve heard the news?” he said. “I’m coming over. I’ve left the office, I’m coming over right now. We need to talk about this.”

Luxembourg had been misplaced in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Juliet hadn’t known much about the Pacific Ocean, but she now found out it was
vast
; you could drop a country in it easily, no sweat, say, twice the size of Luxembourg, and never expect to find it. The people of Luxembourg hadn’t even noticed for a day or so they’d been transplanted; they were a bit puzzled by the warmer weather, but they weren’t going to complain. And then it dawned on them—they were aboard an enormous raft, a thousand square miles floating untethered out of the reach of civilization. They peered over the edge. They found out that as wide as this raft was, it wasn’t very thick—it was just a sliver of a nation, really, no more than three feet deep. And so the authorities had set up a rota, and the population had taken it in turns to lean over the side and paddle their way to the nearest country. They had thousands of miles to cross, but they really put their backs into it, it had taken them a little less than a year before they were close enough to Samoa to get a mobile phone signal and call for help.

And the best news was, as far as anyone could determine, pretty much everyone in Luxembourg had survived the incident. There’d been a few deaths, of course—old age, illness, suicide—but it looked as if they were the sort who’d have died anyway, all the dead looked fairly old or sick or fundamentally depressed. And there’d been some instances of cannibalism, where some of the populace had panicked and thought they might be about to starve, but these cases were few and far between, and no one had been quite sure why they’d resorted to such desperate means in the first place. After all, the cattle and the vegetation had been unaffected by the vanishing act, and besides, all the grocery stores had stayed open and kept normal hours.

So there was no reason to believe that Colin wasn’t alive, and well, and would soon be coming home. “How do you feel about this?” asked Dave. He was sitting with her in the kitchen, looking very stern. And she didn’t know how she felt, actually, did she need to
know
just yet, why did there always have to be a reaction to everything? She said she was excited. “No, how do you feel about us? What’s going to happen to us?” And she hadn’t even
started
to consider that. “Do you care at all?” he asked. And he said that he loved her, that he’d told her many times, but she’d never been straight with him, she’d never given him that love back. And she wanted to say that of course she loved him, she let him share her bed and her potato salad, what was love if not that? And she
did
tell him she loved him, she did it at least once a day, she counted; she just made sure he wasn’t there at the time, or made sure he wasn’t conscious, or made sure he was just out of earshot—and even now she didn’t say this to him, it didn’t seem fair to offer up love when she’d never been sure she was free. And he called her a bitch, said that he’d ruined his life for her, abandoned his wife, his kid, it was all her fault. It wasn’t her fault, she began to say, it was
Luxembourg
, Luxembourg had done this to them, it disappeared for no reason, now it had popped back, how could a small European country be her responsibility? But he was having none of it. He left the house, if she wanted Colin rather than him that was up to her. He’d see whether Sheila would take him back, maybe if he said sorry, if he apologized for the rest of his bloody life. And, as it turned out, Sheila
did
take him back, but only under very stringent conditions. Apologizing for the rest of his life was just the start of it.

Metal hoops were hammered into the ground, studding the whole coastline. Ropes were threaded through. And, on a count of three, a whole flotilla of helicopters winched Luxembourg into the air, flew over to Europe, and lowered the errant country back into position. It wasn’t a perfect fit, it was hard to get it into the hole exactly. Some of the extremities had to be chopped off, they lost the whole of Schengen and all the bits of Hinkel that were worth a damn. But they did the best they could, they stamped and kicked the towns that were bulging out into place, and Luxembourg was once more part of Europe. Only three feet thick, it bobbed on the water, and everyone was warned not to walk too heavily in case they sprung a leak.

And Colin came home. “Hello,” he said to Juliet. “Hello,” she said back. And neither were sure what to do, they both felt a bit shy. She had wondered whether seeing him on the doorstep once more would fill her with a romantic passion, that they’d sweep each other up in their arms, and never stop kissing again, never stop making love. It wasn’t quite like that, but it was affectionate, they gave each other a hug. “Would you like some lunch?” she said, and he said he would. She asked him what the ordeal in Luxembourg had been like. “Oh, you know,” he replied, and shrugged. He noticed she was pregnant. That’s right, she said. He said he didn’t blame her, she’d have thought he was dead, he’d have done the same thing had she been the one who’d disappeared. “What was he like?” he asked. “Was he better than me?” “Oh,” she said, “you know.” He nodded, ate his potato salad, said he’d never ask her again. To his credit he never did. She just hoped that the baby growing inside her looked nothing like her husband, it’d be hard to explain. But a few months later out it came, and it didn’t, it looked like every other baby, a bald, bad-tempered old man.