Sleight of Hand (25 page)

“Well we absolutely loved it,” Jenny says. “Everything about it. All of us.”

“Well, now you know where it is,” Susan says, taking the keys from Jenny's grasp. “Anytime.”

“There is one problem we need to tell you about though,” I say.

“Oh yeah,” Jenny says, pulling a face. “The roof.”

“The roof?”

“It's been leaking,” I explain. “The back bedroom is completely mouldy.”

“It's always been a bit damp,” Susan says.

“I'm afraid it's
more
than a bit damp now,” Jenny tells her. “The whole wall has gone green. We tried to bleach it, but it didn't help much. Mark says it's the flat roof leaking.”

“Oh God,” Susan says. “We'll have to get someone in to fix it then. I wonder how much that will cost. It means going down there too, of course.”

“Don't you
like
it there?” Jenny asks, incredulously.

“It's OK,” Susan says. “I used to really like it. I was always keener than Ted. But then … well, nowadays it … it reminds him of things.
You
know what I mean, I'm sure,” she tells Jenny, somewhat mysteriously.

“Right,” Jenny says vaguely.

Susan coughs. “Plus Ted likes his home comforts. It's hard to convince him to go anywhere these days to be honest.”

“I wonder what happened in the beach-house,” Jenny says once Susan has left.

“I bet he cheated on her,” I say. “A summer romance.”

“Or she on him,” Jenny says, “Maybe there was a sexy neighbour.”

After lunch I head upstairs for a sleep. I doze off quickly and dream that I am back on the beach. When I wake up an hour later, I jolt with surprise at the sight of the green wallpaper around me.

I wash my face, and head downstairs to find Sarah seated, exactly as before, in front of the television.

In the kitchen, Jenny is still at the kitchen table too – staring out at the garden. “The view's not the same, is it?” she says when she becomes aware of my presence.

“It's not bad,” I say. “But no, it's not the same.”

“How are you feeling?” she asks.

“Better,” I say, taking a seat beside her. “I was feeling a bit washed out to be honest.”

“Yeah. I feel quite … well … depressed really,” she says.

“Post holiday depression syndrome,” I say.

“I suppose.”

“Sarah's happily catching up on all the TV she missed. She doesn't mind.”

“Yeah. I was thinking about that too. It's funny really. She didn't even miss the TV down there.”

“Too busy with pebbles,” I say.

“Yeah. I suppose. I think I prefer that, though. It seems healthier for her.”

“Sure,” I say. “Still, back to nursery tomorrow.”

“Yeah. I almost took her for the afternoon, but to be honest, I just couldn't summon the energy to walk there.”

“You should have told me.”

“You were asleep.”

“You could have woken me.”

“It doesn't matter anyway.”

I yawn and stretch. “So how long can Sarah stay off before you get into trouble?”

Jenny turns to me and frowns. “What do you mean,
get into trouble?”

“Well, it's like school isn't it? Surely she has to attend a minimum number of days.”

“Not at all. No, it's a private thing. I
pay
for her to go. It costs nearly two hundred quid a month. There were no places at the state one by the time we moved.”

“Wow. Really?”

“Uhuh.”

“Why?”

“Why what?”

“Well, why take her then? I mean, it's not like you're working at the moment.”

Jenny shrugs. “Mum thought it was a good idea. Which I suppose it is. They learn to make friends and stuff. It gets her ready for school next year. And she watches less TV that way. Also, the plan was, of course, that I would find a job.”

“Fair enough,” I say. I sit and think about this for a bit and then say, “You know, I thought she
had
to attend.”

“No. As I say. It's optional.”

“But if she
doesn't
… well then there's no reason why we have to be here at all, is there?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, why don't you ask Susan if we can't use the house longer term. We could offer to fix the roof or something … repaint that room for her. We could do a deal.”

Jenny turns sharply to look at me. She looks suddenly very business like, very professional. “You mean
live
there?” she asks.

I shrug. “Why not? For a few weeks. Or a few months. I don't know. Why not?”

“Wouldn't
you
mind though?” she asks.

“Me? Why? I
love
it there.”

“Oh,” Jenny says. “I thought you preferred it here.”

“Why would you think that?”

“I don't know. You have a room here, at least.”

“But if we fixed up the spare room. If we mended the leak.”

“And you can call Ricardo here … there's no phone line is there.
And
no internet.”

“Sure, but … Look, don't take this the wrong way …”

“Go on,” she says.

“Well I hate it here to be honest.”

Jenny laughs sourly. “Well join the club,” she says.

“And London's not too far from Pevensey for checkups and stuff. And it's not like you have to go every day now …”

“No.”

“So we could get organised. You could get the post redirected. We could maybe get the phone down there reconnected if it's not too expensive. I saw that there's a socket.”

“And you wouldn't mind?”

“I'd rather be there than here,” I say with a shrug.

“Right.”

“Are
you
sure you don't mind Sarah dropping out of nursery though?”

“I think it's good for her to be elsewhere to be honest. Running around on beaches and all that.”

“So …” I say.

“It all depends on Susan though really, doesn't it?” Jenny says, standing.

“It does. Where are you going?”

“To ask her.”

“Right now?”

“Yeah. Right now.”

Less than a minute later, Jenny returns. She looks glum.

“No go then?” I say.

“She's not in. They've gone out.”

“Oh well.”

“God. I so want to do this,” Jenny says, breaking into a smile. “I hope that she says, ‘yes'.”

“Me too.”

“I'll be gutted if she doesn't.”

“Maybe we need to look for something else in that case.”

“Yeah. Maybe we do.”

The good news comes on Tuesday afternoon: Susan is so happy for us to use her beach-house over the winter that Jenny wonders if our presence next door doesn't perhaps offend her in some way. Whatever her reasons – and I think it's probably got more to do with her hopes that we will fix the roof – we can barely contain our excitement. Jenny starts running around the house randomly grabbing things to take, and Sarah, infected by all the elation, follows her from room to room shrieking.

Jenny, predictably, wants to leave immediately, but I persuade her to wait until the weekend. “Let's do it properly,” I argue. “Let's take the time to think about everything we need to take, and everything we need to do. Otherwise we'll have to come back in three days because we have forgotten something.”

We redirect the post, request that the phone line be reconnected, and empty the refrigerator. Jenny makes vast lists of everything that we might need, and then rampages around the house fetching things and putting them in piles.

Fitting this eclectic collection of stuff into the Micra takes almost as long again, but on Saturday morning, in a mood of boundless optimism that is entirely disproportionate to a simple house-change, I drive out of the close.

“Goodbye misery, hello happiness,” Jenny says as I attempt to coax the heavily laden car into pulling away. I only hope it turns out to be that simple.

The omens are good, though – the traffic is as fluid as the day is bright. Man, woman and child
driving a car loaded with luggage to the seaside feels somehow primordial – like some ancient ritual handed down over generations. Never have I felt so hetty.

The only thing missing is a bank-holiday traffic jam, and so by eleven thirty I am bumping back over the beachfront car-park again.

“God I'm so happy to be back,” Jenny says. “Is that weird?”

I turn off the engine and push my door open against the buffeting breeze. I stand and scan the horizon, taking in the vista which stuns me anew. The sea is a deep dark blue today, topped with frothy whitecaps. The low winter sun is sharp and warm, its intensity doubled by the shimmering ripples of the sea.

The air is shockingly cold and unusually clean and transparent. The result is that all of the colours look brighter than usual, as if someone has upped the saturation.

I take a deep breath.

Jenny releases Sarah from the child-seat and looks at me over the top of the car.

A gust of wind ruffles her hair and she slaps a hand on top of her head to hold her wig in place and breaks into a grin. “Nearly had a carry-on moment there,” she says.

I smile back. “Wow,” I say. “It's just irresistible, isn't it?”

We spend Saturday moving stuff from the car to the house and shuffling it around. Because our stay here is less temporary we also move some of the furniture around to better suit our needs. Specifically, we turn the vast sofa so that we can sit side by side and face our nine feet of seascape telly.

“Tomorrow I'll scrub that wall upstairs again,” Jenny says as she butters bread for lunch. “If we can make that room usable it would be much better for you.”

“Yeah,” I agree. “I'll get up on the roof and try to see what's wrong. Stopping the leak is the first thing.”

“And then I think you should get out and about,” Jenny says thoughtfully.

“Out and about?”

“Yeah, get yourself over to Brighton and have some fun before my next chemo session. You haven't had a night out since you came over from Colombia.”

I frown. “Hum,” I say vaguely, thinking that I'm not sure I want to bump into Tom. Brighton's gay scene may be consequential considering the size of the town, but it's my experience that it's impossible to spend a night in Kemptown without bumping into someone you know.

“If you're worried about bumping into Tom,” Jenny says, efficiently reading my mind, “we can synchronise. I can invite him over for the evening, and leave you with Brighton all to yourself.”

I nod slowly and chew my lip. “Maybe. It's not just Tom though,” I say, thinking back to London and how incapable I was of enjoying the gay scene there without Ricardo. And then I realise that London now feels like a very long time ago, and that since then, I have learnt to live without Ricardo quite efficiently. Which strikes me as a far from reassuring thought.

Our broadband arrives on Tuesday and, because of these concerns, I make a concerted effort to speak to Ricardo daily. This campaign ironically coincides with it becoming increasingly difficult to
catch Ricardo in – the arrival of the dry season in Colombia means that I rarely manage to call at a time when he is within hearing distance of the phone.

After a week of frustrated messages on answer-phones, we agree that it's easier if he just Skypes our landline daily instead, and this slight change has its own perverse side effects. Because fifty percent of the time Jenny answers the phone, she ends up having to speak to Ricardo.

The first few times this occurs, the shock is evident – she throws the phone at me as if it is a grenade about to explode and runs, blushing, from the room.

As the days go by, however, she learns to execute this first with elegant nonchalance and then to actually relax enough to exchange civilities with him.

On our second Wednesday in the house, I return from having tar-taped the split in the roof and find Jenny slouched on the couch, apparently in the midst of one of her long friendly chats with Tom.

Once I have showered and changed I return to the lounge to find her still on the phone.

I'm just considering asking her to wind up her conversation (it's time for my call from Ricardo) when she hands me the phone. “It's Ricky,” she says, casually, “he wants a quick word with you.”

Ricardo's opening phrase –
I can't talk for long, Chupy, I have to go out
, does little to stem my rising tide of jealousy.

I spend all day, in fact much of that week, wondering what they talked about: their past together? Jenny's illness? Me? A couple of times, I even open my lips ready to express the question forming on my tongue. But I never
do
ask. For some
reason I never quite find the right way or the right moment.

Other than Jenny's resurrection of “Ricky,” though, those first weeks at the beach-house are perfect. The cold, crisp weather continues, the tar-tape seemingly holds, and the wall in the spare room dries. By day I work on my translations and run along the beach with a screaming Sarah on my shoulders, and by night we sit and listen to our seventies time-warp record collection and stare out at the phases of the moon.

Most importantly of all, Jenny looks as well as I have seen her since the end of radiotherapy. She even starts to put on a little weight – an unsuspecting subject of my own secret Susan-inspired clinical trial of cooking her pancakes every morning for breakfast.

It's spitting with rain by the time I get to Brighton on Friday night. It's not ideal for wandering around on my own, but with Tom and Sven invited to dinner, it's hardly an ideal moment to stay at home either.

I head down to the pier and buy myself a donut. As I walk across the wooden planks biting into a delicious mixture of sugar and fat, the smell of the donut mixed with the salty sea air, and the flashing lights of the amusement arcades provokes a flurry of memories from my childhood. I remember playing air-hockey with my dad at the end of the pier, the feeling of having candy-floss stuck to my nose, an aunty sneaking me out of the house to play the slot machines on the sea-front.