Wishful Thinking (7 page)

Cal is the reason the Design Department can tell a writer like Todd Jarman that his title is too long. It is thanks to Cal that Ransome Harber has
never
been up for the Worst Dust Jacket award at the Frankfurt Book Fair. He claims he can turn a sleeper into a bestseller simply by changing the packaging, and has, on occasion, proved it, with a little help from Promotions. The fact that he's dyslexic and is said never to have read a book in his life is irrelevant. Colleagues complain he's a stroppy perfectionist who makes their lives hell, picks their work to bits, and always thinks he knows what's best – unhappily, he usually does – though if he's been particularly difficult he will sometimes compensate by buying them a beer later. At the time of that party he was still a year or so short of forty, with floppy dark brown hair that made him look much younger, designer specs, and a face which, without being classically handsome, was – is – definitely attractive in a rather boyish, half sad, half mischievous way. He plays killer squash and goes running most days on Streatham Common near his home, so what you can see of his muscles look more suited to the sports field than a publishing house. Perhaps to plug his artistic image, he shaves infrequently and never wears a tie.

He was also the office lech. In those days, anyway. He seduced all the prettiest temps and would then start on the plain ones, with little subtlety and a cheerful lack of discrimination. As a rule he avoided any entanglement with the permanent staff but was seen out from time to time with leggy models, pouting PAs, dashing advertising executives. None of his affairs ever lasted more than a few days, or at the most a few weeks, and male friends said that despite the philandering he was still in love with his wife, a former biochemist called Christine. His marriage was long-standing but reputedly sex-free since the birth of his second son, who was severely mentally and physically handicapped. His wife had given up her career and everything else to devote herself to her child, becoming immersed in related charity work and eventually rising to a directorship in the Williamson Trust, which specialises in the care of handicapped children. Cal, so he claimed, was forced to seek solace elsewhere.

I saw a distinct gleam in his eye as he studied Georgie's cleavage, but it didn't bother me unduly since such gleams were automatic with him, she was permanent staff, and his taste normally ran to girls of twenty-odd. I drifted away to talk to someone else and it was only when I glanced over, an hour or so later, and saw Georgie and Cal still nose to nose that I began to feel slightly anxious. Of course, Georgie was an older woman with aeons of experience under her belt: she could look after herself . . .

‘Georgie and Cal seem to be getting on awfully well,' Lin said in my ear. ‘Oh dear. You don't think they . . . ?'

‘Not getting on,' I said. ‘Getting off. What
is
she doing? She knows his reputation. Everyone does.'

‘He's been dropping into our office quite a lot lately,' Lin volunteered. ‘He said it was about the posters for
Doomspinner
– but that isn't anything to do with us really. That's Promotions. I thought he was just being friendly. He tries to flirt with me sometimes.' Lin isn't the flirty type.

That, I knew, meant nothing. Cal would try to flirt with a lampstand if it looked vaguely female. It wasn't the possibility of flirtation that worried me.

If I'd known what I knew later, I'd have worried even more.

‘I've fancied you for ages,' Cal was saying with a flash of his cheeky-schoolboy grin. ‘I keep telling myself it's a bad idea, but I won't listen to me. I've always tried to avoid getting mixed up with anyone at work . . .'

‘It
is
a bad idea,' Georgie agreed. ‘What about Trudi Horn from Contracts? Was that another bad idea – or just a lapse of judgement?'

Cal made a face. ‘Both. I was hoping you wouldn't have heard about that. Gossip travels at lightspeed in this place.'

‘It didn't have far to travel,' Georgie pointed out. ‘Besides, I gather Trudi mentioned it – discreetly, of course – to about half the world. She was pretty upset.'

‘She wanted commitment. I told her, right from the start, I don't do commitment. I don't do the L-word. I'm a married man. I just want sex – and you're the sexiest woman I've seen in ages. You don't look the neurotic type – you're young enough to be gorgeous and old enough to be sensible – and I'm drunk enough to try it on. The question is, are you sober enough to slap my face?'

‘Oh, I could do that drunk, too,' Georgie said sweetly. ‘If you're so married, why all the extra-curricular activity?'

‘Christy and I don't have sex. I thought everyone knew that. We're going through a bad patch.' He sounded slightly defensive. ‘Lots of married couples do. We'll get over it, and when we do I'll go back on the straight and narrow. Until then . . . I'm a man, I like women, I need sex. I suppose I ought to control it, but I've never been good at abstention. In any case, you've only got one life and you have to make the most of it. Someone or other once said it isn't the things you've done that you regret, it's the things you haven't done.'

‘You wouldn't believe how often I've heard that one,' Georgie sighed. ‘And you were getting points for honesty till then. How long has this bad patch lasted?'

‘Since Jamie was born. My younger son.'

‘And he is—?'

‘Eight.'

Georgie didn't say anything more, not then. She was thinking: Eight years? That's more than a marital blip. Poor Cal. I wonder why? He's really very attractive . . .

She said: ‘So you want us to have a little commitment-free sex? A quick roll in the hay – or the metropolitan equivalent? Even though we work for the same company, in the same building, so it's a really bad idea?' He shrugged, then grinned, an irrepressible sparkle of hope in his face. ‘Why me?'

‘I told you, I've been lusting after you for months. You're stunning, you could have any man, and I'm nothing special, but – I'm an optimist. I thought it was worth trying my luck. Nothing ventured and all that.'

‘Try it, don't push it,' Georgie said with sudden hauteur. ‘Take off your glasses. No – put them on again.'

‘You wouldn't
believe
how often I've heard that one . . .'

She laughed, meeting smile with smile. ‘No, really, take them off again. I want to see your eyes properly.' She saw they were grey, with a fleck of hazel at the centre. How can eyes be expressive? she wondered. It's lines and wrinkles, colour-change and muscle-movement, that create expression. Eyes are just balls of jelly with variegated circles on one side. How can a ball of jelly look sad? ‘They're . . . sort of tweedy. Unusual.'

‘
Your
eyes are lovely,' Cal said. ‘Huge and deep and soft. I could fall into them.'

‘That would be poetic,' said Georgie, ‘if it was my eyes you were looking at.'

As the party fizzled out, Lin and I joined them and talked pointedly of departure. Cal bade us a cheerful goodbye and headed home first, leaving Georgie to wander along with us. Outside, she said: ‘I can't be bothered with the tube. I'm going to look for a cab. Goodnight, guys.' She didn't tell us until some days later that the cab in question was waiting round the corner, by prearrangement, with Cal McGregor inside.

Lin and I wormed the truth out of her pretty quickly, but they managed to keep the affair secret from the rest of the company for quite some time. ‘We're just having a little quiet fun,' Georgie said. ‘It won't last more than a month or two. He's got a lovely body. I haven't been close to that much muscle in a long while. That's the trouble with this job: all the men I hang out with are middle-aged media types going flabby round the middle.'

‘You should get yourself a toyboy,' I said. ‘That's better than a married man.'

‘I've never fancied very young guys,' Georgie responded. ‘I don't want to wake up next to anyone prettier than me.' She extricated a small silver mobile phone from her handbag. ‘Cal gave me this. He's taught me text-messaging. He says you can't have a clandestine affair without it.' She scrutinised her latest message in complete bewilderment. ‘Can you read text?'

I gazed doubtfully at a jumble of letters and numbers.

‘The dyslexia doesn't help,' Georgie conceded. ‘Still, spelling doesn't matter in text.'

‘He's never opened a book,' I said, unreasonably irritated. ‘He only looks at the pictures.'

‘We don't need books,' Georgie retorted. ‘We've got Real Life.'

In bed, inevitably, they began to talk. You can't have sex all the time, and in between there are those moments when you stop, sip alcohol of some sort, and it's dangerously easy to open up. Cal isn't a verbal communicator: he expresses himself through images. But when Georgie wants to be sympathetic she could get a corkscrew to unwind or coax a confession from a hardened criminal. ‘You're a terrific lover,' she told him, flattering with sincerity. ‘I can't think why Christine doesn't appreciate it. It seems such a waste. I know you said the other day she had a medical problem after Jamie was born . . .'

‘Sort of.'

‘I don't believe you. That was years ago. If there was anything wrong, the doctors would've fixed it. Can't you tell me the truth now?' And, very gently: ‘Is it so difficult?'

‘Jamie . . . was premature. Things went wrong. That's why he – why he was handicapped. I didn't understand the technical details. They said it didn't have anything to do with . . . You see, Christy didn't want sex when she was very pregnant. She said she felt fat and ugly. I liked it – I liked stroking her stomach, feeling the baby in there. Our baby. I wanted to be close to her, inside her, part of it. I shouldn't have done it, I shouldn't have thrust so hard . . . She thought that started the contractions. Having sex. She thought that was why the baby came early. Why he was handicapped.'

‘She blamed you?' Georgie whispered.

‘No. Not
blamed.
She just wouldn't do it any more. She said she couldn't. She tried, but she hated it. More each time.'

‘Has she had therapy?'

‘She tried that too,' Cal said, ‘but it didn't last.'

‘It almost sounds as if she didn't
want
to get over the problem,' Georgie mused cautiously, tiptoeing on eggshells. ‘Did she like sex
before
, or—?'

‘She seemed to like it,' Cal said. ‘We did it enough.'

‘What I'm saying,' said Georgie, ‘is that if she didn't have a high sex drive, or if she saw sex simply as the necessary route to having children, maybe, subconsciously, she wanted an excuse to stop. Whatever. It wasn't your fault. You have to take some responsibility – maybe you should have given her more orgasms—'

‘How do you know I didn't?'

‘I know.' She snuggled up, kissing the hollow of his shoulder.

He softened. ‘Okay. I was twenty-one when we started dating. I wasn't much good in bed then. Too inexperienced.'

‘You've improved,' she said. ‘We all start out young, ignorant if not innocent. When I was seventeen I thought I knew everything just because I'd read the right books. You don't need to feel—'

‘Guilty? I don't feel guilty.'

‘I was going to say inadequate.'

‘Do
you
think I'm inadequate?'

Her hand moved down. ‘Oh no.
Very
adequate . . .'

Some time later, coming up for air, he said: ‘What about
your
marriage? You said he was an alcoholic. Was that what finished it?'

And so Georgie told him her story, and as their intimacy developed mentally, so their physical intimacy intensified. At the office, even the prettiest temps passed unmolested, and although Cal's flirtatious manner continued, it became more a matter of routine, with no real intention behind it. He began to discuss his work problems with Georgie, absorbing something of her attitudes, and colleagues declared he had mellowed. Lin and I watched with mixed feelings. ‘You're going to get hurt,' Lin asserted with unwonted stringency. ‘Married men are always a bad idea. Is he going to leave Christine?'

‘I don't want him to,' Georgie said. ‘Anyway, it's just casual.'

‘What
do
you want?' I asked, but she didn't answer. Perhaps she didn't really know.

Georgie had been a
femme
mildly
fatale
for most of her adult life without ever doing any real damage. There was no trail in her wake of broken hearts and ruptured relationships; as she herself put it, no man ever died of unrequited lust. But when Cal assured her of his lack of intentions, when she set about unwinding the corkscrew – opening the oyster – coaxing from him the exposé of his most secret fears and feelings, a little demon at the back of her mind whispered: Go on. You can do it.
Make him care
. Whether born of vanity or devilry she didn't know, but she was ashamed of it, and doubtful of her power, and unable to take it seriously. Georgie had survived her various trials and tribulations largely by never taking them seriously. She played the game because it
was
just a game, always forgetting the catch. To take, you have to give. And because Georgie is warm and generous by nature she gave without thinking, without prudence or restraint. ‘Of course I shan't fall in love with him,' she told us. ‘I'm over forty. I'm sensible. I've only ever
been
in love once, and that was more than enough. Anyway, he's
Cal
.'