A Most Desirable Marriage (8 page)

Jo sighed. ‘You think I should accept it?’

Maggie was silent for a moment. ‘Up to you of course, but it probably makes sense to stick with what we know, despite what I said the other day. Frances seems quite keen on the idea; they wouldn’t be negotiating if she wasn’t.’

‘OK.’ Jo knew she wasn’t really in the right frame of mind to sell herself to anyone anyway. ‘As you say, bird in the hand.’

‘You think you can face writing about the subject, do you?’

‘Since it’s all I think about, I might as well. Could help get it out of my system.’

‘Poor you.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for me, Maggie. Worse things happen at sea.’

‘I suppose.’ Her agent sounded doubtful.

‘What, you think my life’s worse than shipwrecks, drowning, sharks?’ Jo challenged, laughing. ‘Great.’

‘No, I don’t, I totally don’t,’ Maggie said quickly. ‘I didn’t mean that. But I’ve told you, just looking at the
photo
of a shark makes me puke.’

When Jo had put the phone down she realized that even if she took her husband’s needs out of the equation, she would have no choice but to sell the house. There was no way she could live on the paltry advance – spread over eighteen months – from the publishers. And she couldn’t imagine anyone giving her a proper job at her age.

26 August 2013

‘Come with me,’ Travis said as he munched his toast at the kitchen table. ‘It’ll be fun.’

‘Will it? I went years ago with the children: horrible screechy whistles, pounding music, sweaty people crammed together like sardines, screaming kids . . . and boiling hot, as I remember.’

‘Says the paid-up member of the Disgusted of Wherever Gang.’

‘Tunbridge Wells. Sorry.’ Jo smiled. ‘Carnival just isn’t my thing. And why do they have to leave out the definite article? Shouldn’t it be THE carnival? Isn’t carnival just a noun, rather than a proper noun? It’s annoying.’

Travis waved his half-eaten toast in the air. ‘Whoa! You
really
don’t like it.’

‘I just remember hating the noise and being worried I’d lose the kids. But maybe I’d feel different now.’

‘You should give it another go. Hey, why not? You can always quit. And it’s cold out there today, no chance of “boiling”, as you put it.’

Jo glanced at her lodger. She found, just in the few days he’d been in the house, that she was increasingly drawn to his company. His rehearsals didn’t start till the day after Bank Holiday and Nicky seemed permanently glued to his new girlfriend, so Travis had spent a lot of time just hanging around, either reading or studying his iPad, listening to music with his headphones. She’d cooked him supper every night, despite his protestations that she shouldn’t, and she’d looked forward to it. He was such easy company and it made her realize how lonely she’d been over the summer. Now she hesitated.

‘I’ll cramp your style.’

‘Yeah . . . sure you will.’ He flashed a smile. ‘No way I want to go on my own.’

She knew he was being kind, but the holiday stretched empty ahead of her.

‘If you’re serious . . . OK . . . OK, I’ll come.’

‘Awesome!’

‘But you don’t have to look after me. If you want to go off on your own . . . I’ll be fine getting back.’

Travis raised his eyebrows. ‘Says my maiden aunt.’

‘Oh, and one more thing. I won’t dance.’

‘Sure, Aunty. I hear you, Aunty.’

*

They walked up through Shepherd’s Bush and down Holland Park, turning left into Ladbroke Grove. It was early in the day, cold for August, with grey, lowering clouds, but already crowds – including families with young children, reminding Jo of her panic when she’d brought Cassie and Nicky – were piling up from the Tube station, the tangled thump of music loud in the barbecue-scented air.

‘OK so far?’ Travis glanced sideways at her, a quizzical smile on his face.

‘Yup. Don’t seem to have come over all queer yet.’

They talked little as they made their way up the hill, both just absorbing the atmosphere, Jo enjoying the sense of anticipation as they approached the hub of the street festival. The head of the procession of floats had got as far as Westbourne Grove, and the pavements here were pressed tight with people contained behind the metal crash barriers. All along Portobello Road were food concessions – every conceivable type – but with a preponderance of West Indian jerk chicken and curried goat sending off mouth-watering aromas of meat and spices.

‘Oh my god . . . we gotta get some.’ Travis was standing close up to a large grill, peering down at the sizzling, golden-brown chicken pieces and sucking in the pungent smoke as if it were fresh air. ‘My belly’s gone into spasm.’

‘You’ve only just had breakfast.’

Travis nodded. ‘Yeah . . . OK, perhaps we should wait a bit.’

As they walked on, the infectious beat of the steel drums set the American dancing along the pavement. His movement was confident and sexy as he became absorbed in the rhythm and Jo found her own body twitching to join in. Travis saw her face and laughed breathlessly.

‘Come on girl . . . move that booty.’

But Jo came over all self-conscious and just grinned, pretending she was absorbed in watching one of the floats going past with a gorgeously attired girl sporting a massive peacock-feather headdress. The mix of drums, the ear-splitting blasts from metal whistles on Rasta ribbons that many people sported, music, shouting, singing, cooking smells and smoke, rubbish underfoot, the press of people, was intoxicating. Jo took a long breath. Enjoy it, she told herself. Relax.

After a while, she and Travis bought some jerk chicken and rice and peas in two recyclable brown containers, two cans of Coke and retreated to a low wall on the far side of Ladbroke Grove.

‘Jeeez, that . . . is . . .
hot
,’ Travis said through a mouthful of chicken leg. His eyes widened.

‘Too hot?’

‘You like spicy?’

‘Yes . . . well, not head-blowing spicy.’ She took a bite from her own and the chilli hit the back of her throat, making her cough and bringing tears to her eyes. ‘See what you mean. But it’s good,’ she added through tingling lips.

‘My mom used to cook spicy curries a lot.’

‘Was she from the West Indies?’

Travis laughed. ‘No, Wisconsin. If you’re referring to my colour, my grandmother on my father’s side was from West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire. My grandfather was French. He met her when he was working for the government there after the First World War, and they emigrated to the US.’

‘Interesting. But you grew up in California?’

‘Yeah, San Francisco. Dad was an anthropologist at Stanford. Mom looked after me and my three crazy brothers. What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘You English?’

She nodded. ‘Apart from a Danish great, great something on my father’s side . . . boringly English, I’m afraid.’

‘I thought you had a Scandinavian look about you.’

She looked at him askance. ‘Really?’

‘Yeah . . . tall, good bone-structure, those light eyes.’ He was studying her now, his head on one side, and she felt a blush rise to her cheeks.

‘I did go to Copenhagen once, with Lawrence,’ she gabbled, ‘and they all talked to me in Danish as if they expected me to understand, so perhaps you’re right.’

Travis reached over to take her empty cardboard carton and looked around.

‘Where should we put the trash?’

At that moment a band of six or seven men in their early twenties, Hawaiian shirts, hugging tall tinnies and clearly drunk, surged down the crowded pavement next to them, chanting something raw, repetitive and threatening – although they seemed in their own space, uninterested in the rest of the crowd. Most people cleared a path for them nonetheless, but another group standing about smoking on the corner, wearing baseball caps and huge white trainers, chose not to. Jo watched as they turned towards the drunks, silently fanning out across the pavement. None of them spoke, but they were intentionally blocking the way. The drunks came to a halt, the chanting stopped.

‘Let’s get out of here.’ Travis was beside her. ‘Someone’s going to get their ass kicked in a second and it won’t be pretty.’ He grabbed Jo’s hand and pulled her along, pushing through the carnival crowd. As the people thinned out he began to run, dragging Jo along with him, hands still clasped, both breathless as they sailed down the hill towards the Holland Park junction. They came to a halt outside the Tube station. Jo bent over, laughing and gasping in equal measure because she felt alive for the first time in a long while.

‘What are you trying to do to me?’

Travis grinned. ‘Nothing like getting the oxygen pumping.’

‘Nothing like giving me a heart attack.’

Once they’d got their breath, they set off again at a normal pace. ‘Do you suppose it was a planned meet?’ he asked.

‘What, like a gang thing?’

He nodded. ‘Maybe. I’m certain they knew each other.’

‘You think?’

‘Sure . . . the ones on the corner looked like they were expecting them.’

‘Glad we got out then. There’s usually at least one stabbing at the carnival, although it’s better than it used to be.’

‘One sounds good by California standards. There’s that about every hour in LA.’

‘You don’t have to come home with me, you know,’ Jo said as they walked along. ‘I can just about manage.’

Travis looked at her sideways. ‘Hmm . . . you think?’

‘Ha, ha.’ She paused. ‘But listen, thanks for making me come. I had a great time.’

‘Yeah, me too.’

‘It hots up later on. You should go back, you’ll enjoy it.’

The American shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m done. Those whistles fry my brain. Anyway, Nicky said he might be around later to hang out . . .
sans
the girlfriend.’

*

Travis went off to meet Nicky, and Jo was glad he had gone. Because as she sat alone on the sofa, a glass of red wine in her hand, thinking about the day, she had a horrible sense of understanding. Travis
was
cute, as Donna had told her. And she, Jo, found him uncomfortably attractive. That moment when he’d taken her hand, when they’d run together, laughing, down the hill . . . she had felt almost happy.

You’re a pathetic old woman, she told herself firmly. He’s at least fifteen years younger and can’t have the faintest notion of finding you attractive. So pull yourself together.

She knew she was probably just reacting to losing Lawrence. All her life she’d had this man at her side; the two of them a unit. Even in the years when the children were small and they were both working, she doing the bulk of the childcare and the housework along with her job at the BBC, Lawrence off every morning to his precious college, never even asking if she could manage it all, just assuming she would. Trying times, but he had still been there, always. And today she had enjoyed being pulled along like a teenager on the arm of another man. That was all there was to it. That and a fact that she hated to admit: she was lonely. Travis could have been any man, she told herself, and I would find him attractive.

*

‘Did you have a nice time?’ Jo asked, regretting her question immediately – she had no desire to hear the answer.

‘Yes, good,’ Lawrence answered at the other end of the line, his reply understandably cagey.

Jo found herself imagining them, her husband and Arkadius – young and trim and tanned – swimming in the sea at dawn, the salty coolness of the Mediterranean a pleasing shock when they’d just got out of bed, the light soft on the water, which was often so still, early in the day. They would have been looking forward to breakfast on the terrace: fresh orange juice, coffee, crusty bread with ripe tomatoes and goat’s cheese. She shook herself.

‘I rang to find out if there’d been any movement on the house.’

‘Umm . . . yeah . . . about that . . .’

‘Did the agent come round?’

‘I think we need to talk, Lawrence. Can we meet?’

‘We could. What’s this about, Jo?’

‘Are you around later? Same place?’

She heard the puzzled silence as she refused to answer his question.

‘Sure. Could be there about eleven-thirty.’

‘See you then.’

Jo felt a quiet churning in her stomach as she contemplated telling her husband that she wasn’t going to sell the house yet. She knew how much he worried about money. Always had, it was the one area of his life that his exuberance and flair failed to reach. Brought up in that careful, penny-pinching, hedge-trimming way of his parents, it was in the blood. She had always been more cavalier, more certain that something would come along. Of course now she was paying for that nonchalance with her lack of pension and publishing prospects. But she was adamant she wouldn’t give in to his anxiety. Not yet.

He was sitting at a table outside when she arrived. The day was warm and she was sweating from the walk. This time he didn’t get up or offer to get her a coffee, although he had his own, half drunk, in front of him.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, you look well.’ Which he did, his fair skin tanned as much as it ever did, his blue eyes bluer by contrast. He was wearing the grey-and-white-striped shirt with the button-down collar she had bought him about five years ago – one of his favourites.

‘So what did you want to say that couldn’t be said over the phone?’

Jo sat down, taking her time. On the way over she had been working out how she would tell him. Her instinct was to apologize, but she remembered Donna’s rant, and deleted that bit –
she
had nothing to apologize for. In the end she decided there was no good way of delivering bad news, so she just came out with it.

‘I don’t want to sell the house just yet. I don’t feel ready.’

Lawrence’s expression darkened. He probably knows, she thought, that it won’t help if he gets angry.

‘OK . . .’ the syllable was drawn out. ‘And what made you change your mind?’

‘Meeting the Foxton’s girl; facing the reality of having prospective buyers snooping round the house; the thought of moving from our home.’

‘But you must have realized all that before.’ His voice was tight.

‘I suppose, in theory.’

‘Well, I can’t afford to rent a place and sub your life, pay for all the stuff on the house. I just can’t do it on my pension.’ Jo watched him take a deep breath. ‘You said you were OK with it. I’ve predicated my whole life on having that money in the next two months or so. The house is a goldmine. I know it’ll be snapped up the second it goes on the market.’

Don’t apologize
, she repeated to herself.

‘I mean when do you think you
will
be ready? Two months, six months? When, Jo?’ His panic was palpable in the rapid blinking of his eyelids, the twisting of the empty sugar packet beside his cup. Not his, he didn’t take sugar.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied truthfully.

‘So . . . what? I’m supposed to hang fire until you are? This is my house too, you know. I’m the one who’s paid the mortgage all these years. I paid for the glass doors to be put in. I paid for the new boiler . . . Anyway, it’s ridiculous, you living in that huge house on your own.’

Jo’s heart was emitting a dull, angry thud in her chest.

‘The whole thing’s ridiculous,’ she said quietly.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

‘Well, you and Arkadius, us being apart . . .’

Lawrence took a long, bitter breath, raising himself up in his chair from his previously slumped position.