Thursdays in the Park (21 page)

She hadn’t told George. She was savouring Ray’s words, holding them close, separate for the time being from the furore they would create when made public. She had given herself today.

‘Bite down . . . OK . . . and again.’ The dentist chomped his own teeth in example. ‘How does that feel?’

‘Fine. I can’t feel a thing.’

The dentist’s look was patient.

‘But when you bite, it doesn’t feel high over that tooth? Have another go.’

Jeanie bit down.

‘It’s fine.’

‘Be careful not to drink anything hot for the next couple of hours. . . in case you burn yourself,’ he added when he saw Jeanie’s baffled stare.

She made her way from the dentist’s surgery to her shop. Jola greeted her with sympathy. ‘I have teeth done in Poland. Is very much pain. I be OK if you want go home.’

Home was the last place she wanted to be. George would be in his room, fiddling with his clocks, still innocent of the Scud aimed directly at his heart. Every time she saw him now, every time he smiled at her or called her ‘old girl’, her own heart would contract with shame.

‘It’s OK. It was only a filling,’ Jeanie assured her, patting her finger gingerly over her cheek to see if there was any improvement in the numbness.

‘That man come in, he ask for you.’

‘What man?’

‘He come in before with little boy, beautiful boy. You not here.’

‘Dylan . . .’ Jeanie said absently.

‘I say you back soon, but he not wait. He say to ring him.’

‘I can’t speak properly.’

‘Come anyway,’ Ray said.

She met him at the cafe in the park after she shut the shop. The habit of worrying whether they would be spotted together no longer seemed relevant.

‘Like old times,’ he said, as he dangled the tea bag in his cup.

‘Can we run away? We could go to Rio or somewhere they don’t have an extradition treaty. I could get a cafe on the beach – they’re supposed to be lovely, the beaches – and serve English sausages and Marmite. You could give aikido lessons to the Brazilians. We’d drink rum, or whatever they drink there, and just be happy.’

‘Caipirinhas. They kill you but you die happy.’ Ray laughed. ‘You’re on, let’s go.’

They both went quiet.

‘Don’t say anything.’ Ray held his hand gently to Jeanie’s lips. She took it and held it between her own.

‘I wanted to see you once more before . . .’ he hesitated, ‘before the shit hits the fan.’

‘You make it sound so final.’

‘George?’ Jeanie called up the stairs. No answer. She mounted to the second floor and knocked on the door of George’s clock room.

‘Come in.’

He was sitting in the usual place at his workbench, the wooden surface strewn with tiny, intricate pieces of clock mechanism. The one he was mending had a pretty art deco case in smooth, grey marble.

‘Hello, darling, what can I do for you?’ He dropped the magnifying lens from his eye, caught it in his palm, pulled his spectacles from the top of his head and turned to greet her.

‘Are you all right? You look worried.’

‘George, can we talk?’

She watched him get up and stretch his long limbs, raising his hands above his head and yawning. He glanced at one of the twenty or so clock faces at his disposal. ‘Gracious, is that the time already? I meant to get out in the garden and sort out the magnolia this afternoon.’

He turned Jeanie gently round and steered her towards the door. ‘Let’s get a glass of wine and sit outside. It’s a lovely evening.’

Jeanie’s hand shook as she took the glass of chilled white he proffered.

‘Come on then, tell me what’s up.’ He took a leisurely sip and settled back in the garden chair, the look on his face one of pure pleasure. ‘I hope it’s not another rant about the country,’ he added, his eyes, so like Ellie’s, alight with mischief.

Jeanie, by contrast, sat bolt upright, her wine held away from her as if it were an unwelcome distraction. What she was about to say was so beyond anything she could ever have imagined herself saying that she almost laughed at the sheer implausibility of it.

‘George . . . there’s no easy way to tell you this, but I’ve fallen in love with someone else.’

There, it was done.

For a moment she thought he hadn’t heard, or perhaps that she hadn’t spoken after all. The sun didn’t fall from the sky, George went on lounging there as if nothing had happened. Then he blinked, stared at her.

‘What did you say?’

She put her wine down, frightened she might drop the glass on the stone terrace. It seemed very important not to do so.

‘I met this man, a few months ago . . . and . . . well, we’ve become very close.’ Even to her own ears this sounded coy, like a line out of some trite romantic melodrama.

George sat up.

‘Jeanie, don’t be ridiculous. You can’t be in love with someone else . . . it’s . . . well, it’s ridiculous.’

She held his gaze.

‘This is a joke, right?’ She heard the anger building.

‘I wish it were, George.’

Now he stood, smacked his glass down on the table and stood staring down at her.

‘Stop it, stop this at once.’

She dropped her eyes.

‘Who is he?’

‘His name is Ray Allan. I met him in the park with Ellie.’

‘I don’t believe you.’ His tone was stubborn and final. He began to walk away, back through the French windows into the kitchen.

‘George, come back.’ Jeanie hurried after him. ‘Where are you going?’

Her husband went on walking towards the hall.

‘I’m not going to stand around listening to this drivel,’ she heard him mutter.

‘George!’ She reached him and grabbed his arm, swinging him round to face her. He tried to pull away, but she, in that moment, was stronger. ‘We have to talk about this.’

Then he looked her squarely in the eye and she saw the pain. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

But Jeanie had spent a decade giving in to her husband’s powerful denial, and it wasn’t going to happen any more.

‘No. No, George. We
are
going to talk about it. We have to.’ She began to drag him back into the kitchen and pushed him down in a chair. Sitting down on the other side of the table, she watched his eyelids flutter across his blank, shuttered stare.

‘There’s nothing to say.’ He wouldn’t look at her, and began to flip the edge of his clock magazine back and forth between his thumb and forefinger. It was the only sound in the kitchen except for the clocks themselves. She snatched it away and threw it to the other end of the table.

‘So you’re just going to pretend nothing’s happened?’

‘Well, what do you want me to do? Shoot myself? Shoot him?’ He paused, raised his eyebrow at her. ‘Shoot you, even?’

‘Please.’

He got up and stood for a moment watching her. ‘Jeanie, I don’t know what’s been going on and I don’t want to. I trust you to sort it out. Meanwhile I don’t see the point in talking about it.’

And with that he turned on his heel and left her.

Halfway to the door he stopped and faced her again, a question, a comment obviously on the tip of his tongue. But whatever it was he couldn’t say it.

Instead he nodded his head twice, briskly, and went on his way.

She sat at the kitchen table in the gathering darkness, numb. Once again he had refused to believe her, negated her feelings, leaving her in the limbo of the unheard. Yet he
had
heard her, she knew he had; she saw the pain, but it was as if nothing had changed.

The sound of her mobile roused her.

‘Mum, it’s me. Are you alone?’

‘Yes, Dad’s upstairs.’

‘About last night: you haven’t told Dad yet, have you?’ Before Jeanie had a chance to speak, Chanty rushed on. ‘Because you shouldn’t, it would hurt him so much. I was being selfish. You shocked me and I wanted to get back at
you, I wanted to blackmail you into dumping Ray. But that’s not fair on Dad, is it? I was drunk and upset about everything. Don’t tell him, Mum, please. I’m not condoning what you and Ray are doing, but if it’s a passing whim then get on with it and don’t ruin what you have with Dad.’

Jeanie heard her breath coming in short bursts as if she were climbing stairs. In the background was the ping of a lift. She heard her daughter say goodnight to someone. ‘I’ve already told him, darling.’

‘Oh no . . . oh God, this is my fault. What did he say?’

‘He didn’t believe me, then refused to talk about it. The usual. He said he was sure I’d sort it out. Chanty, this is
not
your fault. None of what has happened is your fault.’

‘So are you saying Dad wasn’t particularly upset?’

‘He was very upset, of course he was, but he wouldn’t admit it, probably not even to himself.’

‘Don’t say I know, will you? He’d hate that.’

‘I won’t.’

‘You sound miserable.’

‘I am, but it’s my own doing. I just wish he would talk to me, even if it’s to say he hates me.’

‘I hope he doesn’t hate you. Better go, I’m at the Tube. Talk later. Bye, Mum. Give Dad my love.’

Jeanie waited, hoping to catch George. Then she realized he was right: there really was nothing to talk about. What did she want him to say? Awkward questions about the detail of how, why and where were not George’s style. So she
went to bed, despite it being hardly ten, and attempted to read a novel that Rita had lent her. It was an epic set in India, but there were too many characters for Jeanie’s tired brain to get a grip on. She kept having to turn back to the beginning, and very soon she gave up, switched off the light and fell into an exhausted sleep.

She awoke to an odd sound. It was almost like a kitten, a sort of stifled mewling, and it was coming from the other side of the bed. Jeanie froze, her brain whirring with possibilities. Very slowly she slid her left hand out of the duvet and found the light switch. As she clicked it, the bedside light shone out, and there, lying curled in a foetal position on the end of Jeanie’s bed, was her husband.

‘George?’ Jeanie, horrified, reached out to touch him. But he seemed catatonic, the rigid body tight-curled, the almost mechanical cries not coming from a conscious mind. He was icy to her touch, his hands clutched to his chest, eyes shut in a white, drawn face. Her heart racing, she automatically reacted without panic, as her long-ago training had taught her, quickly wrapping him in her duvet, dragging his long, pyjamaed body from the edge of the bed.

‘George, darling . . .’ she lay against him, cradling him in her arms and rocking him to and fro like a child. ‘It’s all right, come on, open your eyes. Open your eyes, George.’

She gently brushed his hair back from his clammy forehead, as she so often did with Ellie, stroking his face and body firmly and repeating loudly, over and over, any words that might rouse him from this state. In time she felt him
stirring in her arms and the whimpering stopped, but as he attempted to uncurl himself from the clenched knot of his distress, he began to shake uncontrollably.

When he opened his eyes, his gaze was blank and uncomprehending.

‘Jeanie? Help me . . . I’m so cold . . . what’s happening to me?’

‘You’ll be OK, you’ve had a turn.’ She began to inch him round so that he was propped against her pillows and wrapped him more tightly in the duvet. ‘Do you have any pain anywhere?’

‘No, no pain . . . why am I shaking? I can’t seem to control myself . . . I’m frightened, Jeanie.’

After a while the shaking lessened and colour began to return to his face.

‘How did I get here?’ His voice was breathy and faint.

‘I don’t know. I woke to hear this noise and it was you. You didn’t seem conscious, you must have been in shock.’

‘Shock . . . shock?’ He looked at her, bemused. ‘Why would I be in shock?’

Jeanie’s heart sank. Please, she thought, please don’t make me have to repeat everything all over again. She didn’t reply, just held him close. He seemed to doze off for a while, his head sunk on his chest. He looked so old suddenly, naked and vulnerable without his glasses.

Jeanie waited for him to wake, guilt sitting heavy on her heart. For months now her feelings for Ray had made everything George said or did seem faint and lacking in reality.
But now, lying in her arms, he was intensely present, his face almost as familiar to her as her own.

Jeanie left her husband in her bed and went downstairs to make tea. He had been awake for half an hour, physically recovered despite looking drawn and weak. She had gone up to fetch his glasses for him, still neatly folded by his unmade bed, and wondered at the mental processes that had led him, in the still watches of the night, to lie mewling at her bedside. She had never seen George cry, not once in the thirty-five years she’d known him.

‘Jeanie, we must talk,’ had been his first words on waking, as if he had fallen asleep in the middle of a conversation and was taking up where he left off.

Making tea was delaying the inevitable, she was well aware of that, but she hadn’t had much sleep and felt hardly strong enough to hear what he needed to tell her.

She sat for a moment at the kitchen table, gathering her energy. It was six-twenty and a bright, sparkling summer morning, one she would have relished under other circumstances.

‘Thank you.’ George accepted the tea almost formally. ‘Sit with me, Jeanie. I need to tell you something.’

‘George, I’m sorry. I feel so responsible for last night. You were in such a state, and I know it’s my fault, but why don’t we leave it for now, wait to talk until you’re feeling stronger.’

He shook his head firmly. ‘This can’t wait. It isn’t about you. Please, listen to me, or my courage might fail me.’

Jeanie looked questioningly at him, but his face was set as he waited for her to settle on the bed.

‘None of this is your fault. I’ve let you down badly because I’ve been such a coward.’ He sat hugging his legs to his chest in an uncharacteristically childlike pose, his eyes, poking over the top of his knees, washed out and solemn behind his glasses. As Jeanie watched his face, she realized George had never looked young even when he had been. Measured and responsible in everything he did, he often seemed shut away from Jeanie and the rest of the world. Now his look was resolute; there was no longer any whisper of fear.