Broken Places (24 page)

‘Let’s go to bed,’ she gasped.

‘No – can’t wait – want you here and now!’ Dragging off his own clothes, he flung them on the floor behind him. All the tension of the last gruelling month had reached crisis-point this evening, yet now had been miraculously resolved. Mandy was actually accompanying him to America! Even more amazing, they would soon be husband and wife. He burned to make love to her with all the joy and triumph such assurances deserved; with such extremes of passion, she would have no strength left for Oliver, and with such devoted tenderness, it would celebrate their committal to each other, for better, for worse; for richer, for poorer, and, yes, till death did them part.

‘Mandy, that was just … fantastic!’

‘The best ever – honestly. I’m so glad to have you back.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, these last few weeks, I simply couldn’t get through to you. It was like you were living in a different world.’

‘I was – the world of fear. It
is
another planet, where all the usual
pleasures
and distractions mean nothing any more.’

‘And you mean to say that fear’s completely gone now?’

He laughed. ‘Well, I wouldn’t go as far as that! Let’s put it this way – after I’ve made love to you, I feel so incredibly brave, I could apply for my pilot’s licence and still not turn a hair!’

‘In that case, we’d better do it on the plane – join the Five-Mile-High Club!’

‘No problem. I won’t need an invitation.’ He stroked her breasts, noticing how full they’d become; larger now and weighty, as he cupped them in his hands. He loved to imagine her breast-feeding – a real turn-on in itself. Because of Christine’s mastitis, he had never seen his daughter breastfed, but, when it came to this new baby, he was eager to be part of the whole ritual; maybe pleasuring one breast himself, while—

‘Good God!’ he exclaimed; all erotic images instantly dispelled by the sound of a key turning in the lock. ‘Someone’s coming in to the flat!’

Mandy leapt off the sofa, making a grab for her shirt. ‘Stay here!’ she hissed, as she rushed out to the front door.

He froze in shock. Who in heaven’s name would have a key? The
caretaker
? The landlord? No. Neither would let himself in, without checking it
was convenient – least of all so late. He could hear a man’s deep voice.
Oliver
, he thought! Had the bastard turned up unannounced, thinking Mandy was alone? If so, she was conversing with him clad only in a skimpy shirt.

He listened in a paralysis of jealousy and indecision, then realized she was speaking in a frightened and defensive way, with no trace of the
flirtatious
tone she had been using on the phone. It must be someone else – perhaps a previous tenant, who’d retained his key for some peculiar reason. Or maybe an out-and-out crook, who’d deliberately had a key cut, so he could come and case the joint. If Mandy were being threatened, or was in any sort of danger, he must act – immediately.

Naked as he was, he hurtled out to defend her, stopping in his tracks at the sight of a tall, rangy bloke, dashingly dark and stylishly dressed in a black leather jacket and obscenely tight black jeans – decidedly not a hitman or a thug.

The man swivelled round to look at him, his expression darkening in fury. Then, wheeling back to Mandy, he all but spat at her, ‘So
this
is why you don’t want me to come in! What the fuck’s going on, you promiscuous slut?’

Eric faced the guy head-on, determined to protect Mandy from such appalling rudeness. ‘Who the hell do you think you are? Get out – this instant! Mandy’s my fiancée and I won’t stand for her being insulted like this.’

‘Oh, so you’re engaged now, are you?’ the bloke said, with a sneer, ignoring Eric completely, as he turned again to Mandy. ‘Well,
congratulations
on finding another father for your baby! Though it’s a pity you didn’t tell me. I could have saved myself a journey.’

‘Yes, I … I thought you were in Haiti,’ Mandy stuttered. Her face was deathly pale, and she was cowering against the wall.

‘I
was
in Haiti, but I came back earlier than planned – and just as well, it seems, otherwise I’d never have known what you get up to behind my back. I was fool enough to imagine I could trust you. You see, the reason I returned was to tell you I’d be willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. But my first instincts were obviously right, you two-faced slag!’

‘How dare you speak to Mandy like that?’ Eric cried, outraged. ‘And what the hell d’you mean about her finding another father for her baby?
I’m
the father, I’ll have you know!’

The guy gave a mocking laugh. ‘So now we have three poor saps, all with
a claim to paternity. Well, that’s news to me, I must say! Mandy was forced to admit I might be one of two, but I didn’t realize she’d deceived me twice.’

‘For God’s sake, Brad,’ Mandy said, suddenly springing to her own defence. ‘You said you didn’t want a child. Well, Eric does. So leave him alone, you bastard!

‘Mandy,’ Eric said, with an icy calmness that belied his racing heart. ‘Who
is
this guy? And what’s going on?’

‘Yes, maybe it’s time for some introductions,’ the guy said, with a grim smile. ‘You’re Eric, so I gather. I’m Brad – Brad Sunderland. Though I doubt if Mandy would have mentioned me – not if she was hoping to pass you off as the baby’s father.’

‘I
am
the baby’s father,’ Eric repeated. He would say it over and over; keep reiterating it all damned night, if necessary, until this jerk realized it was true.

‘Can you prove it?’

Eric hesitated, embarrassed to be discussing his sex-life with a stranger. ‘Do you really need all the intimate details?’

‘Yes, I think I do in the circumstances.’

‘Well,’ said Eric, flushing, ‘I … I had unprotected sex with Mandy on New Year’s Eve. A month later, she took a pregnancy test and found she’d conceived that very night.’

‘Amazing!’ Brad jeered. ‘There’s just something you don’t know, you poor mug. Mandy told me she was pregnant two whole weeks before that. And, yes, she had a pregnancy test, but that initial one – I remember it distinctly – was done on December the fifteenth.’

Eric steadied himself against the wall. He hadn’t even known Mandy on 15 December. This couldn’t be happening; must be some sort of nightmare. ‘So … so, if you’re the father, why did you abandon Mandy, piss off to Haiti and leave her on her own?’

‘It wasn’t a question of “pissing off”,’ Brad retorted. ‘I happen to be a photographer and a work assignment came up in Haiti – a much longer job than my usual sort of thing: four months’ travelling the country, recording voodoo rituals and suchlike. And I have to say I was bloody glad to accept, so I could get the hell out of England and leave the whole mess behind. You see, Mandy here is quite the little schemer. Mind you, it took me a while to twig, because although we’ve been together three years, we’ve never shared a pad. I value my independence, so I’ve always kept my own place – a flat in Clerkenwell, which doubles as a—’

‘Never mind your living arrangements,’ Eric interrupted. ‘I’m totally confused by these allegations you’re throwing around. Could you start at the beginning and fill me in, OK?’

‘No!’ Mandy pleaded. ‘Eric doesn’t want to hear this stuff.’

‘The poor sod
ought
to hear it, since you’ve dumped him in the shit.’

Poor mug. Poor sod. Eric bristled at the insults, yet still couldn’t quite believe what this odious man was saying. There must be some mistake. Or maybe the bloke was lying, for some reason of his own.

‘Perhaps we could sit down,’ Brad said, irritably, ‘I’ve had enough of standing around in a cramped and chilly hall.’

‘No,’ Mandy begged again, ‘I don’t want—’

Too late. Brad had already barged into the sitting-room and stood a moment surveying the scene; his face screwed up in an expression of disgust. Eric felt doubly mortified, realizing how sleazy it must look:
sofa-cushions
dumped on the floor; two discarded pairs of jeans, lying inside-out; his scarlet Y-fronts intimately entangled with Mandy’s black lace bra and pants. She was now frantically trying to cover herself; grabbing her jeans and dressing in desperate haste. No way would
he
get dressed – demean himself by fumbling with zips and buttons, while Brad looked on derisively. He already felt at a definite disadvantage; not only naked, but less distinguished in every way than this sleek and striking intruder. However, he seized the throw from the sofa and wrapped it round his body; wishing he could simply vanish from the earth.

Brad flung himself into a chair. ‘OK,’ he said in an acrimonious voice, ‘let me put you in the picture, Eric. Around the middle of October, Mandy decides to come off the Pill, but she doesn’t bother to inform me of the fact. A month later, I find out, and, yes, I’m pretty bloody furious. She knows full well I don’t want kids. In my line of work, I’m forever on the move and I don’t fancy being tied down – or not yet, in any case. I mean, if a job comes up I like the sound of in, say, Bangkok or the Congo, I drop everything and go.’

Yes, of course you do, Eric muttered under his breath. A he-man and a jetsetter snaps his fingers at any sort of danger; doesn’t need chaperons and straitjackets and mega-supplies of Valium, just to get him through one puny flight.

‘Well, to cut a long story short, we had a flaming row and Mandy slammed out of the flat and went to some drunken party on her own. OK, we made it up, and she promised to go back on the Pill until I’d had more
time to sort out what I felt about the whole business of a family. Then, exactly four weeks later, she tells me she’s pregnant with my kid. She just happened to conceive between stopping the Pill and restarting it. I was stunned, of course, but I did the decent thing – told her I’d pay for the kid and accept my responsibilities as father. I can’t say I was exactly delighted by the prospect, but I reckoned I could handle it – well, until one of my close friends told me he’d seen Mandy actually shagging some bloke at that famous party she went to on her own. They were having it off in one of the bedrooms, he said, where he’d gone himself, to crash out. It seems everyone was legless that night and, in fact, Mandy told me later she was so rat-arsed she hadn’t even known what she doing. Well, that was her excuse, but it didn’t change the fact that the baby she insisted was mine could just as well be his.’

‘
Stop
this!’ Mandy implored, now slumped on the sofa, with her head in her hands. ‘It’s nothing to do with Eric.’

‘It’s everything to do with him. You were already six weeks pregnant when you and he first screwed, so no way could this kid be his. Yet you were willing to deceive him – tell him a quite flagrant lie and think no one would find out.’

Eric drew the throw closer round his body, aware that he was shrinking – in size, in strength, in status. He had become a puny cuckold; a bare-arsed figure of fun; a poor mug; poor sap, poor sod.

‘Anyway,’ Brad continued, springing up from the chair again, in obvious agitation, ‘while I was in Haiti, I had time to mull things over and, once I’d simmered down a bit, I tried to see things from Mandy’s point of view. She’s five years older than me, and I knew she wanted kids, so maybe I’d failed to understand all that stuff about women’s biological clocks. And she did seem truly sorry about sleeping with the other bloke; said she’d only done it because she was so gutted by our quarrel, she just got pissed out of her mind and—’

Yes, thought Eric bitterly, remembering Mandy drinking at his birthday party; announcing her pregnancy in public, when they’d agreed to keep it secret; allowing her whole family to congratulate him on what he was forced to realize now was a completely fraudulent fatherhood.

‘And I don’t mind admitting I missed you.’ Brad had stopped by the sofa and was addressing her directly. In fact, giving her a sexy leer, Eric noticed with another surge of fury. All Brad had missed was the shags – that was bloody obvious.

‘So I thought “what the hell, why cut off my nose to spite my face?” I’ll do what I promised originally – accept the kid and pay for it, even if it’s not my own. But not now – no way – not after what I’ve seen tonight. I mean, for all I know, Eric may be one of a whole string of men you’ve been screwing here, when you thought I was three thousand miles away.’

A whole string of men. The phrase was like a punch in Eric’s face. Yes, what about that slimy Oliver? Was
he
another candidate for the hapless role of father?

‘Well, thank Christ I’ve stumbled on the truth before committing myself to umpteen years of childcare. I doubt we’ll ever know who the sodding father is, but at least it’s not my problem any more. I wash my hands of the whole damned thing – and that’s my final word, Mandy. I’ve seen you for what you are now – a lying, deceitful, scheming, little bitch!’

Mandy gave a cry and dashed towards the bedroom.

‘Hold on a minute!’ Brad said, intercepting her. ‘I shan’t be using
this
again!’ He hurled the door-key into her hands then turned on his heel and strode out, only pausing to shout, ‘‘Good luck, Eric! You’ll need it.’

Eric shuffled along the path. He had grown old in just the last two days – no longer a thrusting lover, a soon-to-be-new-father, but now a discarded piece of trash, like the stained and greasy McDonald’s cartons he’d seen flung down near the entrance to the park. Yet everything around him was young and in its prime: trees glazed with pollen or unfurling into new green leaf; daffodils exploding in full-throated golden triumph; clouds of blackthorn blossom frothing in bridal white. Pigeons were cooing and courting; other birds pairing up or busy building nests. He alone seemed solitary, surrounded as he was by lovers strolling hand-in-hand and family groups with little bands of kids. Clearly, mothers and grandmas had been coaxed out of doors, in droves, in honour of Mothering Sunday – a day he had always detested, when the whole damned land went gaga over mothers. Was
his
mother feeling disgruntled because she hadn’t received a lavish bunch of flowers? Well, if she’d only thought to get in touch forty years ago, she would have had lorryloads of flowers, by now, and he’d have been treating her to lunch today. Except he couldn’t bear her to see him in his present abject state: a failure, with no love-life and no future, destined to be on his own for ever.

He screwed up his eyes against the glare; resenting the sun for shining with such fervour; hating the baby-blue sky, simply for its colour. Maybe his mother had gone on to have a brood of other children and had simply written him off as an error of her youth. Was he crazy to have idealized her, when she could just as well be subnormal, stupid or criminally insane? He had never forgotten Rory, one of the kids at Grove End, who’d been removed from his mother when little more than a toddler, on account of her LSD addiction, and didn’t meet her again till the age of thirteen. Imagining she’d be totally cured and thrilled to have him back, the reality was cruel: he had come face to face with a ravaged old hag, who displayed
no emotion whatever, beyond a sense of bafflement that her baby had grown up.

He was so deep in thought, he all but collided with an elderly woman and her equally ancient dog.

‘Excuse me, but do you have the time?’ she asked.

‘Yes, just coming up to half-past twelve.’ The strength of his voice surprised him. Shouldn’t it be a croak now; an old codger’s bronchitic wheeze? He was glad of the interruption, though, since it had roused him from his introspective brooding. Self-pity was quite odious and he had no right to inflict it on Stella, who’d been kind enough to invite him to lunch, knowing he’d always hated Sundays on his own and that, following Mandy’s bombshell, this particular Sunday would be hellish in the extreme.

He ambled to a stop beside the lake, where more kids were larking around; more young couples sitting entwined on the benches, kissing and embracing. Moving closer to the water’s edge, he watched a drake pursue a duck with merciless determination; bite its neck to hold it down
underwater
; then rape it, more or less. Sex in the animal kingdom seemed so short and unsatisfactory, if not downright violent; a total contrast to his long, tender nights with Mandy. New Year’s Eve had been the first and best, because so unexpected; so rapturously triumphant. Of course,
now
he realized that her sheer randiness and lust had been nothing more than a deliberate ploy to ensnare him. Her baby required a father – and required one pretty fast. She hadn’t time to select a better candidate, so she had set out to seduce him; apparently regardless of the fact she would then be forced to deceive him throughout his lifetime,
and
the child’s. His own personal Dewey Decimal system was now completely overturned, so that everything was wrongly filed: ‘love’ under ‘self-interest’; ‘passion’ under ‘calculation’; ‘trust’ under ‘duplicity’; ‘fatherhood’ under ‘
cuckoldry
’.

An eccentric-looking female, dressed in a summer frock and wellingtons, began feeding the birds with a whole, large farmhouse loaf. More and more avian hopefuls came flocking in, to grab their share of the spoils; geese and coots and tufted ducks paddling full-speed across the lake; gulls and pigeons swooping down from above. Soon, a cacophony broke out –
honkings
, squawkings and quackings, accompanied by angry flappings as one bird fought another or tried to drive it off. Eric surveyed the scene in silence, aware that it was an echo of the turmoil in his head: one emotion battling
with another – love and desire for Mandy, followed by sheer loathing of her treachery; deep longing for the unborn child mixed with hatred for its every cell, because it had been fathered by some pick-up.

His mind drifted to Tom Jones, who had also been unfaithful; rogered a whole raft of women, yet, despite all the betrayals, still achieved his happy ending: marriage to Sophia. Was there any point in being loyal, he wondered, bitterly? Or maybe, unlike Tom, he was simply destined to lose the things that mattered. After all, the pattern had been set in childhood where no relationship ever lasted long. Each time he found a ‘mum’ or ‘home’, a modicum of love and safety, it had been snatched away and he’d been packed off somewhere else.

Aware that he was indulging in more nauseating self-pity, he turned his back on the birds and continued along the path until he reached the
subtropical
gardens. His attention was caught by a group of presumably vulnerable plants, swathed from top to bottom in straw and polythene, to protect them from the elements, and looking like Egyptian mummies standing upright in the flowerbed. He himself was in need of similar
wrappings
; thick and bulky bandages to bind his wounds; swaddle his raw feelings; cocoon him from the sharp winds of grief and loss. And they would be even more effective on the plane; shrouding his eyes and ears, so that he wouldn’t see any terrifying void opening up beneath him; hear any dangerous engine-noise, or the sounds of an impending crash. And those lengths of twine that girded the plants would tie him down securely in his seat, prevent him running amok or leaping up in panic every time the plane lurched.

Taking a diagonal route across the sports field, he noticed a dead
fledgling
, fallen from its nest; the naked, embryonic form reminding him of the baby again. He kept wondering whether Mandy would have left him if, like Christine, she had suffered a miscarriage. Did she only value him as useful dad-material: someone – as she had pointed out herself – who would be unfazed by messy kids and, in that one respect, preferable to Brad? A snazzily dressed photographer wouldn’t welcome sticky fingers besmirching his designer clothes, nor would he be running baths or reading bedtime stories if he spent half his life abroad. The question was uncomfortable; prompting another in its turn: had Mandy ever loved him for himself?

Averting his eyes from the pathetic little corpse, he headed for the Albert Gate and for Stella’s garden flat, which was in this northern stretch of Albert Bridge Road, right opposite Battersea Park.

‘Hi!’ he said, giving her an affectionate hug. He had neglected her of late; too obsessed with Mandy to socialize with his loyal, long-standing friend.

‘Great to see you! Have you left your bike somewhere safe?’

‘I’m not on the bike. I … decided to walk.’

‘It’s quite a trek from Vauxhall.’

‘Not really. And it’s such perfect weather …’ The sentence petered out. He refused to confess that, having cycled all his life, he had lost his nerve two days ago.
All
his fears had mushroomed in those last racking
forty-eight
hours. Mandy thought him courageous for riding a bike at all, since she regarded it as more hazardous than driving. And, indeed, the very prospect of getting on a bike now filled him with alarm. Even day-to-day living had become fraught with new and indefinable dangers, no matter where he went or what he did. And neither the scented, spring-like air in the park, nor the general mood of Sunday relaxation had done anything to assuage his sense of menace and precariousness.

‘Well, come in and have a drink. How are you, anyway?’

‘OK.’ Why burden her with all the details? The sleeplessness and headaches, the sick, churning feelings in his gut were all clearly
stress-induced
and thus of little consequence.

She ushered him in, took his coat, poured him a glass of wine. Settling into a chair, he glanced around at the familiar, high-ceilinged room. Prior to meeting Mandy, he had always envied Stella this light and spacious flat, yet now it seemed dull and drab, in comparison with Mandy’s place. It was as if he’d become addicted to Mandy’s brilliant colours; her riot of cushions, pictures, paper flowers; her exotic fabrics and unusual ornaments.

‘Aren’t you drinking?’ he asked, as he took a sip of wine.

‘No. I’ve given up booze for Lent.’

‘What, you’ve suddenly seen the light and become a Born-Again?’

She laughed. ‘No fear! It’s more a slimming thing – saving on calories and detoxifying and all that sort of stuff.’

‘Hell! That doesn’t bode too well for lunch. What are we having – celery sticks and lemon juice?’

‘Don’t worry – it’ll be proper food. Though, when it comes to cooking, I can’t compete with Mandy, as you’re very well aware. And, talking of Mandy, I have to say, I think the way she’s treated you is absolutely disgusting!’

He said nothing; unwilling, even now, to hear her attacked – the woman he had once adored.

‘I mean, deceiving
you
, of all people, when she must have known how much a baby’s parentage would matter, after your own experience.’

He took refuge in his glass, secretly acknowledging Stella was right, but unable to admit it.

‘What’s the matter, Eric? I thought you
wanted
to discuss all this?’

‘Mm, I do. But … but I can’t help thinking of the dreadful state she must have been in. I suppose she didn’t dare to tell me the truth, in case I just pushed off. The irony is, if only she’d been honest, I would have probably stayed around – you know, accepted the fact that it was someone else’s kid, but still helped her bring it up. In fact, I keep wondering if I should do that – put the baby’s interests before my own wounded pride. The child needs a father, as I know better than anyone.’

Stella sprang to her feet in indignation. ‘Are you out of your mind? If she’d deceived you over something so important, how could you ever trust her again?’

‘Yes, but look at it from her point of view. She comes from a very
traditional
family that has no truck with single parents, let alone with women who sleep around. If they were ever to twig that two different men could be the father of her child, and she hasn’t a clue which one, they’d be truly
scandalized
. Her sisters are all conventional types, happily married, with children of their own, and they’re always urging her to settle down to
motherhood
and marriage.’

‘I don’t know how you can defend her, Eric. None of that is any excuse whatever.’

‘OK, maybe I
can’t
defend her, but what about the kid?’

‘It’s the kid I’m thinking about – I mean, the callous way she didn’t seem to care that it might find out you weren’t its actual father and be absolutely devastated. Remember the case in the paper, just a week or two ago – that fourteen-year-old whose whole life fell apart when she discovered that the man she’d always called her dad was nothing of the sort?’

Yes, he did remember, In fact, he’d actually discussed the case with Mandy, who’d pretended to share his horror at the sham. ‘There doesn’t have to be deception,’ he said, desperate not to dwell on her wounding, brazen hypocrisy. ‘Once a child’s old enough to grasp the facts, you can make it clear that you’re not its biological parent, but that you love it just the same. What worries me especially is that neither of the baby’s two possible fathers is willing to take responsibility, so it’ll grow up fatherless. And, according to the statistics, that’ll affect its life quite badly, which is
why I feel I ought to step in myself. I mean, I could be its dad, in the sense of caring for it day-to-day, and paying for its keep.’

‘Eric,
no
, I’ve told you! Why should you scrimp and save for someone else’s child, while Mandy arses around, bringing in no proper sort of income, and probably laughing behind your back?’

He noted Stella’s vehemence. Perhaps she simply wanted him single, so they could see much more of each other, as they had done, prior to Mandy. Were anyone’s motives ever really pure?

She returned to her chair, slumping down in an aggressive sort of fashion. ‘All she’s done is use you and abuse you, and you’re far better out of it. To me, she’s just a scheming little bitch!’

‘That’s exactly what Brad called her.’

‘No wonder! She deceived him, too, remember. Even coming off the Pill, without asking what he felt about it, to me is unforgivable.’

‘Yes, but she was longing for a baby. And she’s nearly thirty-six, which is old when it comes to—’

‘I’d
like a baby, too, and I’m three years older than her, but that doesn’t give me the right to treat a man as a sperm-donor, then bamboozle him about it.’

He forced a laugh, feeling both uneasy and disloyal, but attempting to lighten the mood. ‘Well, she certainly had to lower her standards when she settled for
me
as father, instead of Brad. He’s fifteen years younger, to start with, ten-foot tall and drop-dead gorgeous. And, instead of being a dreary librarian, he’s a famous—’

‘Librarians aren’t dreary,’ Stella cut in, incensed. ‘I won’t have you running them down. Any halfway decent librarian does far more for the community than some jumped-up paparazzo chasing after second-rate celebs.’

‘He’s not that kind of photographer. According to Mandy, he’s an idealist and a visionary who travels to Third-World countries and records war and famine and poverty and stuff.’ If it weren’t so tragic, Eric reflected, it would be jolly nearly comic: a fearless he-man on the one hand, spending three months in Haiti, surrounded by gun-runners and rioters and risking
kidnapping
and death-threats. And, on the other hand, a snivelling wimp, too scared to board a plane, and paralysed with terror even in a lift.