I Could Love You (10 page)

‘Too early.’

‘No, it isn’t. You’re on the payroll now. Office hours.’

He smiles at her, a wistful smile.

‘Why didn’t you come knocking on my door fifty years ago?’ he says. ‘I was beautiful as a god then, and I had the world at my feet. The man you see before you now is no more than a ghost. I have nothing left to offer the world.’

‘You have your truth,’ says Christina. ‘And you have your anger.’

10

By the time Meg Strachan gets home it’s almost six in the evening, and most of the residents’ parking bays are occupied. A man is unloading his car, bag after bag bulging with groceries from Sainsbury’s. He straightens under his load, gives Meg a friendly nod. He’s called Malcolm, and he occupies the flat below. Meg nods back. She’s still in her office clothes, charcoal grey skirt and jacket from M&S, white blouse, black tights, comfortable black shoes. You’d think it was a uniform, but she chose it all herself, aiming to project an air of quiet competence. There are other signals here too: that she understands her modest place in the ranks of professionals, that her behaviour will be predictable, that she neither asks nor expects to be noticed as an individual.

Malcolm goes ahead of her to the side door. He makes a brief show of holding the door for her, burdened as he is.

‘Don’t bother,’ Meg calls. ‘I’ll be fine.’

Ridiculous, but she feels responsible for the weight of the shopping bags on his arms. Meg’s day-to-day life is driven by a battery of minor fears. She hates to be thought of as being in the way; she’s fearful of doing the wrong thing, of not being wanted. Given the option she would like best to be invisible, and if she is noticed, if she does enter the consciousness of a fellow human being, she wants above all to be helpful.

The side door has closed after Malcolm and locked itself. Meg has her key ready. Inside, the light on the stairwell, set to switch off automatically after just less time than it takes to climb the stairs, illuminates what was once the servants’ entrance. There are no windows onto this narrow stairway. When you emerge onto the second floor, where her flat is, there’s a tall window at the far end of the passage through which, in daytime, you can see past mature beeches to the East Sussex National Golf Club beyond the main road. There was a similar view from the landing window of the house she grew up in, and sometimes she thinks she bought the flat for this momentary echo of home.

Not that I was ever really happy there, she reflects. But familiarity isn’t the same thing as happiness.

The flat has lost value since she bought it at the height of the property bubble. But at the same time interest rates have come down, cutting almost one third off her monthly mortgage repayments, so she’s better off, really, given that she has no plans to move. The flat is a conversion, two bedrooms, kitchen-living room and a bathroom, squeezed into what was originally the nursery suite. The conversion looked very smart when she bought the flat, with its granite-topped kitchen units and its sea-grass carpets and its down-lighters. She has discovered since that the work was poorly done. The doors stick, there are far too few power points, and the shower has never worked. Despite all this, Meg loves her flat. This is where her most intense life is lived. Here, at this kitchen table. On this sofa. On this bed.

Just time for a bath if she’s quick. While the bath runs she turns on the television to people the room.
The Weakest Link
is coming to an end, not a programme she likes, but the news will follow shortly. She pours herself half a glass of wine and thinks as she drinks it how surprised her mother would be to see her, her mother who never touched alcohol, who never smiled, who never said she loved her.

I’ve got a lover now, Mum. Bet you never expected that.

Naked in the bath she relaxes, not looking but sensing the outlines of her own body. The not-looking is habitual, like the clothes she wears that are designed to deflect attention. Meg is no beauty, her mother used to say, but she’s such a help. Her reputation in the family as the one who can do anything. Not, of course, the grand achievements like writing plays, that’s for her brother Alan. Meg’s skills lie in fixing domestic appliances, finding lost spectacles, ordering tickets on the Internet. Now, because she has a lover, she finds she has a body. Not the approved brand of the day, her breasts too small, her hips too wide, but still a body that inspires desire. This is the wonder of her life: that he desires her. And desired, she becomes beautiful.

Out of the bath, she dries herself and puts on clean new underwear. Special pretty underwear, for which she undertook a special shopping trip to Brighton, where she would not be recognized. This is her love offering. The first time she wore the skimpy lacy garments she undressed quickly, turning away from him, dreading being ridiculous. But he saw and approved. He made her lie down beside him with her underclothes still on. He wanted to look at her.

She shivers as she remembers. The feeling is so strong. It frightens her sometimes, the enormity of her debt. This gift of desire which he makes her with every visit has changed her life. There is literally nothing she would not do for him.

She puts on a bathrobe on top of her underwear, and goes through to the bedroom. She folds the bed cover back, smoothes the pillows.

This is where I’ll lie with him in my arms.

Already her body, tingling and alive, is anticipating the caresses to come. The moment when he pulls her towards him. The touch of his lips on her nipples. The weight of his body on her body.

She lights the candle on the bedside table and waits for the flame to steady. Then she turns out the lamps. Candlelight is so gentle, so sexy. He loves to look at her naked by candlelight.

No talk of love, no talk of the future. Only now, and the life-changing discovery of sexual desire. His desire creates hers. Oh yes, she wants him all right. She wants him in her arms and in her body.

The phone rings. Her brother Alan wanting to know about the plumber.

‘He’s coming tomorrow. He’s going to take a look at the shower tomorrow.’

‘He’ll fix it. There’s nothing Matt can’t fix.’

‘How was the meeting?’

He was in London today for one of his glamorous film meetings.

‘No grimmer than usual.’

Meg admires Alan: four years older, the family favourite, the one who bears the full weight of their parents’ hopes. His life has become unimaginable to her. He meets film stars. He flies to Hollywood.

For a few short perfect years she and Alan shared a bedroom. Then when he was nine years old he announced he wanted a bedroom of his own. Meg, aged five, remained in the room they had shared, weeping herself to sleep every night. She never blamed Alan. How could she? He was so much more worthy than her. Why should he be burdened by her love? But from that day on she had known she was alone in the world.

‘Let me know how it works out,’ he says on the phone. ‘Everything else okay? Job still okay?’

‘Yes. I’m just about staying on top of it.’

He still feels responsible for her, at least far enough to want to be told there’s nothing he need do for her. So the short phone call ends and Meg is released to her waiting.

She hasn’t told her brother about her lover. What happens between them is outside place and time, it has nothing to do with the rest of her life. Nor with his marriage, his home, his family. It’s a secret and a dream. A few short hours that give meaning to her entire existence.

The television has moved on to the news. The pound has dropped to a new record low against the euro. Four Marines have been killed in Afghanistan. Carol Vorderman has left
Countdown
after twenty-six years.

Odd how comforting the news is. For all its tales of death and despair it manages to be reassuring. Maybe it’s because most of the misery is inflicted on others. Or because for all the changes of name and location, essentially the same things keep on happening, and the world doesn’t come to an end. As if every news item functions as a talismanic prayer that wards off the unnamed evil and keeps us safe from harm.

Parisians are flocking to London to spend their euros in Marks & Spencer and Top Shop. Meg finds this mildly offensive. What has Paris to do with supermarket bargains? Paris is where she and Tom have talked of going for the weekend, if ever his professional and family commitments allow. At least, he said it once, asked her if she would like that, and she said yes she would.

Actually anywhere would do. The magic would be that they could go about as a couple. Stroll down a shopping street. Eat in a café. Go to a film. All the things couples do together that become meaningful because they are shared. Once you’re in a couple the film can be bad and the evening is still memorable. As for walking down the street side by side: the gaze of every passer-by is as binding as the voice of a priest in a wedding church. The sacrament of the boulevard.

Did he mean it? He’s never spoken about it since.

Carol Vorderman wept as she left the show.

A car driving up outside. Meg goes to the kitchen window which overlooks the residents’ car park and sees him pulling up, getting out of his car, glancing back as he presses the remote lock to see the answering flash of orange lights.

She turns off the television, checks herself in the mirror in the living room, pulls the belt of her bathrobe tight around her waist, runs a hand through her hair. Not what you’d call a beauty, but she’ll do.

Hyper-receptive to every detail of his coming, she hears the outer door open and close two floors below. He uses the key she had cut for him, the key that he keeps openly, unquestioned, on his key ring, the way into her private space that lies warm in his pocket.

Now his footsteps up the stairs: utterly recognizable, though impossible to say what it is that singles him out. His soft confident tap on the door. He knows she’s there, waiting, listening.

And all at once she’s in his arms.

‘Oh, Meg.’

His sigh of happiness. He kisses her. She whispers in his ear the words he has taught her, the words he longs to hear.

‘I want you to fuck me, Tom. I want to be fucked.’

Afterwards, lying in bed by candlelight, they slip into a half-sleep. Only five minutes or so, but Meg treasures the sweet shared moments of peace.

Then he stirs, and sits up.

‘Is the shower fixed yet?’

‘No, not yet.’

‘No time for a bath. Never mind.’

He must go home to his wife. Meg feels no guilt. This is nothing to do with his marriage. She has no claim on him, does not presume to regard herself as a rival. He has a wife, family, home, job, and from the fullness of his full life he shares with her this infinitesimally small part of himself. It’s the part that only exists with her, and so it rightfully belongs to her. Small for him; for her, all the world.

‘I expect I’ll be playing a round of golf tomorrow.’

This is code. He comes to her after golf.

‘What sort of time?’

‘Twelvish?’

‘Yes, okay. Oh, no. I’ve got the plumber coming round then. I’ll call him and put him off.’

‘Don’t do that. The shower needs fixing.’

She can’t say: I’d rather see you once, for half an hour between a game of golf and family lunch, than ever have a shower again in all the rest of my life. So instead, compliant as ever, she says, ‘Maybe later tomorrow?’

‘Maybe. I’ll call.’

And I’ll be waiting, says Meg silently. Not aloud, because she doesn’t want him to know how much he means to her.

11

‘But you live in London,’ says Caspar, puzzled, twisting his fingers through Alice’s hair. ‘And Guy lives in London.’

‘London’s huge, Cas. Absolutely huge.’

‘I’m going to London to see Guy.’

‘All right. But he’s a very busy man. He may be out.’

‘Out where?’

‘At a meeting. Or a lunch. Or seeing someone.’

Caspar wrinkles his brow, trying to imagine this faraway life.

‘Dad doesn’t go out,’ he says. Then remembering his father went to London today he adds: ‘Mostly.’

‘Alan works from home.’

‘Doesn’t Guy work from home?’

‘No. He has an office.’

Alice smiles as she watches Caspar’s thoughts come and go on his open face. Six years old and he’s as precious to her as the day he was born. Her little half-brother.

‘What’s all this about Guy anyway? Why do you want to see him?’

Guy, her own father, hasn’t so much as called her the entire term, her first term in London, even though she’s been living in a hall on Maple Street, five minutes from his office.

‘I just do.’

‘Well, then, I’ll tell you what. Why don’t you phone him?’

A big smile lights up Caspar’s face.

‘Yes! I could phone him!’

Alice gets out Guy’s number and Caspar presses the phone buttons for himself. To her amusement, Guy evidently answers in person.

‘Hello? Are you Guy? I’m Caspar. I want to see you.’

She watches him as he listens intently, nodding.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘She came home today.’ Then, after listening some more, ‘All right.’

He puts down the phone.

‘He’s coming to see me.’

‘What! Here?’

‘Yes. Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Blimey.’

‘What does blimey mean?’

‘It means I’m surprised.’

Alan now emerges from his study where he retreated to deal with his emails as soon as he got home. It turns out he travelled on the same train from London as Alice, which is a bit spooky.

‘Dad,’ says Caspar, ‘have you stopped using your computer?’

‘For now.’

‘Can I go on it?’

‘Okay. But just for half an hour.’

Caspar hurtles away to Alan’s study.

‘Bloody computer games,’ sighs Alan.

‘How was the meeting?’ says Alice.

‘Oh, you know. The usual. Pretty damnable, actually. I have to start again from scratch, more or less.’

‘Oh, Alan.’ She’s had this conversation with him so many times before. ‘You shouldn’t be doing film work. You should go back to writing plays.’

He smiles and shrugs. He looks so defeated she wants to hug him.