What Was She Thinking? (18 page)

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Authors: Zoë Heller

Tags: #Fiction, #Literary

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I daresay it will seem inappropriate to some people for me to assume a parity between my troubles and Sheba’s. They will be hard-pressed to believe that an ailing pet could cause a person as much heartache as a wayward lover. Sheba certainly didn’t understand this. In fact, it was her failure to respect my grief—to respond with anything like the proper sympathy—that lay at the root of our brief but catastrophic rift.
On Saturday of the second week of December, I picked Portia up from a radiotherapy session at the vet’s. She was always somewhat enervated after these treatments, but on this occasion she seemed particularly depleted. I was so distressed by her condition that I drove straight to the Harts’ house. I had never before gone to Sheba’s home unannounced, but I judged that the circumstances were sufficiently extraordinary to warrant a lapse in etiquette. The house was dark when I arrived. I took the cat’s travel cage out of the car and went up the steps to ring the bell anyway. Portia was sleeping now. I stood on the front step, hoping against hope that Sheba would be in. After a moment or two, I was turning to walk away when I heard running steps, and then Sheba opened the door. She had been
working down in the studio, she explained. Richard and the children were out. She did not acknowledge Portia’s presence.
“Actually,” she said, as we walked down to the basement, “I’m not
really
working. I’m waiting for a call from Steven. We’re meant to be meeting up this afternoon.”
I placed the travel cage carefully on the floor and sat down on one of Sheba’s folding chairs. Sheba laughed nervously. “He was supposed to phone an hour ago, but I haven’t heard a peep yet. Wretched boy.”
I nodded.
“I expect he’s having trouble getting away from his family,” she went on. “He’s normally pretty punctual. His mother sometimes makes him go shopping with her. To carry the bags …”
“Portia’s in a terrible way,” I said, gesturing at the basket.
Sheba stared. “Oh dear. Poor Portia. Have you just come from the vet?”
“Yes. She’s suffering so much, Sheba. I can’t bear it …” I began to cry.
“Poor Barbara,” Sheba said. “How awful.” She came over and crouched down in front of me. “It’ll be okay,” she said, patting my knee.
After a bit, she got up and pulled up a chair to sit next to me. “Please don’t cry. The vet will make her better.” The effort at consolation was so cursory—so silly—that I was briefly enraged. I took a tissue from my sleeve and dabbed slowly at my eyes.
Sheba’s long arms were lying slackly in her lap. Her skin was so pale that you could see all the veins beneath the surface: long, greenish strands, like seaweed glimpsed through water.
“Did you and your friends stroke each other’s arms when you were at school?” I asked suddenly.
She laughed. “What? No.”
“Oh, we did,” I said. “We used to stroke the insides of each other’s forearms during study hall. One girl would do one girl’s forearm while another girl did her forearm. We’d form great long chains of arm stroking. It’s one of the loveliest sensations.”
Sheba laughed disbelievingly. “For sex-starved thirteen-year-old girls perhaps,” she said.
“Oh no, it’s nothing sexual,” I said. “Look, let me show you.”
I took her right forearm and ran the tips of my fingers up and down from elbow to wrist. It was a bold thing to do. I had never touched Sheba so intimately before.
She giggled, at first. “It’s just tickling!” she said.
“No, no,” I said. “Shut your eyes. Feel it.”
She shut her eyes, and I continued running my fingers lightly across her spindly arm. After a second or two, her mouth fell open. Then she pulled her arm away.
“Just relax,” I told her, pulling her arm back.
“Don’t!” she said sharply. “It creeps me out.” She rolled down her sleeve.
The phone rang, and Sheba leaped up to get it. I could tell it was Connolly on the other end by the way she began to whisper and giggle. She carried the telephone into the basement toilet and shut the door.
I sat, angrily swinging my legs, waiting for her to return.
When she came out, she was smiling. “Gosh, I hate to do this, Barbara,” she said, “but I’m going to have to go. That was him.”
I watched her as she began hurriedly to gather up her things. “No,” I said.
Sheba looked round at me, her eyebrows startled into little Chinese hats.
“I mean, please,” I said, somewhat taken aback myself. “Don’t go just yet. Stay with me a bit longer.”
She came over to hug me again. “Everything’s going to be all right,” she said. “You’ll see.” Then she stood up and put on her coat.
“Don’t go, Sheba,” I said again.
She looked at me curiously. “Barbara, come on. I
have
to go.”
I wanted to scream. Bloody Connolly. Bloody, bloody little boy. “Sheba …,” I murmured, grasping at the arm of her coat.
“Please!” she shouted and moved away so abruptly that I lost my balance and fell from the chair, managing to smash my hip on the side of her pottery wheel as I did so.
There was a strange noise from the travel cage, like a thumb being dragged across a pane of glass. Portia had woken up.
“God, Barbara, are you all right?” Sheba asked. She was peering down at me with a nice combination of impatience and alarm.
I sat for a moment, groping at my hip. “I think so.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, yes. It’s just my hip.” My hip hurt like damnation as it happened, but I didn’t want to make a fuss. I peered into the travel cage. Portia was huddled down at the far end, with her fur up and claws out. “Shush. It’s all right,” I whispered through the grate.
“Sorry about that,” Sheba said. Then she slung her handbag over her shoulder and put on her hat. Was she still going to leave? Even after knocking me down? I stood up and staggered slightly.
“Do you think you’ll be all right driving home?” she asked.
“Oh yes, I’m fine,” I said. Sheba was too preoccupied to notice the frost in my voice.
“Good, good,” she said, heading for the door.
I picked up the travel cage and limped after her.
Out on the street, we embraced stiffly. “Well, I suppose I’ll see you on Monday then,” Sheba said. She was shifting anxiously from foot to foot, like someone in need of the toilet. I nodded and took out my car keys. “So, now … ,” she said, “take care of yourself.” She patted my back as I bent to unlock the car.
“Ouf,” I said, rubbing my hip. “I’ll probably have quite a bruise in the morning …” But when I turned around, she was already gone—half-running down the street, to catch her lover before he changed his mind.
 
 
F
or the next two weeks, I stayed away from Sheba. At school, I kept to my classroom during breaks, and when she approached me in the corridors, I was polite but remote. Once, she rang me at home and asked me over to her house, but I made a deliberately weak excuse as to why I couldn’t go. My mood was defiant.
Enough of her
, I thought.
Let’s see how well she gets along without me
. And then, after a while, I became rather depressed. Perhaps more confused than depressed. My life had become incoherent to me. Why did my friends always fall out with me? Why was I always being let down? Was I never to be rewarded for my constancy?
The weather that fortnight was foul. First, there were hailstorms, followed by a few days of sullen, yellow skies. Then came semihurricane winds. Four hundred London trees were felled in a single night. I wondered where, if at all, Sheba and Connolly were managing to meet. I was sleeping very badly at the time. Even when I am in good spirits, sleep does not come easily to me. I tend to wander around for ages before I get into bed, trying to put off the moment when I pull the cold sheet to my shoulder and acknowledge the closing of another day. During
this period, I frequently roamed my flat until three or even four in the morning. Sometimes, I drifted off in my armchair with Portia on my lap, only to be woken, a few minutes later, by the wind shrieking through the street outside.
Portia’s health seemed worse than ever. She was spending most of the time on the sofa now, her face a Kabuki mask of despair. I grew so demoralised at one point that I was even considering taking sick leave from school and going down to my sister’s with Portia. At least, I reasoned, I’d have my meals cooked for me.
And then, just before the Christmas break, Bangs, the maths teacher, invited me on a date. He approached me slyly in the corridor one day and suggested that I join him for lunch that coming Saturday. At a restaurant. This was intriguing. I knew better than to suppose that Bangs had romantic designs on me. But even a platonic interest on his part was a surprise. Bangs had been at St. George’s for four years and, until then, he had never demonstrated the slightest enthusiasm for cultivating my acquaintance outside school. I know now that I should have declined the invitation. But, being at such a low ebb, I was inclined to see his approach as a sign—a message of hope.
Bangs was at least fifteen years younger than me, and he was a fool. (Even my most optimistic speculations did not lose sight of those facts.) But he had noticed me. He had chosen
me
to share his Saturday lunchtime. And who was I to pick and choose? For a few days, I’m afraid I let my imagination run away with me. I pictured myself shedding my old, unfortunate self and stepping forth into the light and air of the regular world. I would cease to be the shut-in biddy waiting around for an invitation from my one, married friend. I would become, at last, a
person who had easy relations with the world, a person who spent my weekends having dates, who carried photographs in my wallet, documenting scenes from the jolly parties and rowdy barbeques and delightful christenings that I had recently attended. I remember it being of particularly piquant satisfaction to me that I was now in possession of a social plan—a
personal appointment
—of which Sheba knew nothing.
By the time the Saturday of my lunch date rolled around, I had grown very nervous and would probably have spent the morning working myself into one of my stews had I not been saved from such nonsense by the need to rush Portia to the vet’s. The poor thing had spent most of the previous night retching all over the living room floor. At dawn she had retreated to the sofa, where she lay mewling in the most pitiful way. I rang the vet’s answering service at seven o’clock and got an emergency appointment for nine. When I took her over there, the vet gave her a brief examination. Then he said he wanted to run more tests. I looked at my watch. In order to make it back to Archway for my hair appointment, I would have to leave Portia there on her own. I battled with my conscience for a few moments. Then I gave Portia a shamefaced kiss and hastily departed.
I loathe going to the hairdresser’s and do so as infrequently as possible, but my unhappiness over the previous fortnight had caused me to neglect my appearance. For a short time I had ceased brushing my hair altogether, and I was now badly in need of a set. The people at the salon were exhibiting the rather desperate good cheer that is characteristic of the British workplace at Christmas. All the girls were sporting sprigs of tinsel in their hair and picking, in a not very hygienic way, at a greylooking Yule log which one of the customers had brought in.
They treated me with their usual contempt. As a punishment for being not quite five minutes late, I was made to wait an agonising half an hour before I was seen to. And then, when I was getting my hair washed, I happened to open my eyes and catch the ghastly girl giggling at me and making faces at one of the other girls over my head. It was lucky for her that I was not in the mood for a fight; otherwise, rest assured, she would have caught the sharp edge of my tongue.
After my hair was finished, I had just enough time to rush back to the flat and change my clothes. I wore my black skirt and plain shoes (no silly heels this time). Then I drove down to Camden Town. The restaurant that Bangs had chosen was a new place—well, new to me anyway—called Vingt-et-trois, just off Camden High Street. It was raining quite heavily when I parked the car, but I took an umbrella and made myself walk slowly around the block two times before I went in, to be sure of not being early.
I was still the first to arrive. It was dark inside the restaurant, and loud pop music was being played on a stereo system. At the maître d’s lectern, a young woman was mouthing the words to the music. She wore a T-shirt that stopped several inches above her navel and trousers that began several inches below it. I gave her Bangs’s name, but she couldn’t find it in her big book (he had failed to make a reservation) and, although there were at least six tables vacant, the girl said it was impossible to seat me until all members of my party had arrived. I became stupidly panicked at this point. She must have noticed and taken pity because she gave me a menu and said, quite pleasantly, that I could wait at the bar if I liked. The bar was in another room, through a little arch, and as she was leading me there she hooked her arm around her waist and scratched lazily
at the strip of honey-coloured back between her T-shirt and trousers.
The man behind the bar was a very raucous person wearing a red Father Christmas cap. He kept shouting unintelligible greetings at his fellow employees and the three patrons who were perched on barstools. “Y’owl right, Barry?” he was bellowing at a passing waiter as I entered. He had a very enunciated, self-conscious London accent—the accent of someone taking pleasure in the distortions of dialect. When he asked me what I wanted to drink, it was with such booming aggression that, despite being rather thirsty, I shook my head and said I wanted nothing.
“Nothing?”
he shouted in pretend outrage.
“Nothing?
You sure about that?” He was smiling as he uttered these words, and the other people at the bar looked at me and smiled too. I understand now, it was just a joke—well, not a joke exactly, more a sort of aimless good humour. He was a “character,” you see. But, at the time, I had the idea that some specific point was being made. That I was being mocked. “I’m waiting for a friend,” I said, by way of explaining myself. I had to raise my voice to be heard above the pop music.
“A friend?”
the barman said, maintaining his tone of pantomime disbelief. “Friend, eh? That right? Waiting for a friend? You gotta have friends, aven’t ya?
Yusss,
friends are what it’s all about, innit?” I nodded, feeling confused and foolish. “Go
on
,” the barman said. “Have a drink. Have a
driii-nnnkkkk.
A nice glass of wine, treat yourself …” He leaned in across the bar and gave me an ironic, goggle-eyed smile.
“
Please stop that
,” I said suddenly.
There was a brief moment of silence, during which the people on the barstools swung round to gaze at me. The barman
paused for a moment, then laughed and turned away. At that moment, Bangs appeared, stooping slightly, beneath the arch.
Living things out in your mind never prepares you for the reality. My mental preparation for this lunch date—the black-and-white film I had been playing in my head all week—had served only to make the actual, colour version more overwhelming. I found myself stunned and slightly appalled by the corporeal presence of Bangs. He was wearing his red V-neck sweater and a jacket of the sort that American baseball players wear. The back and front were made of thick, feltlike material, but the sleeves were white leather. This was a special weekend garment, I presumed, since I had never seen him wearing it at school. He was clutching anxiously at his left earlobe and, even at a distance of a few yards, I could see that his shaving rash was in full flower. For a while, it seemed to me that I might black out from the sensory overload of the moment, the sheer Bangsness of Bangs.
“Hallo!” he was saying. “Sorry I’m late. I hope you haven’t been waiting long.” He approached very quickly, and then, without warning, he made a sort of dive at me—like a bird swooping on food. Rearing back, I felt a glance of damp lip on my chin and understood, too late, that he had been aiming to kiss my cheek. A hard knock ensued, his head colliding with mine, and it became clear—again too late—that he had been going for a kiss on both cheeks. He stepped away, and I stood up from the barstool. The immediate introduction of physical intimacy was a horrid misjudgement on his part, I felt. He had never so much as shaken my hand before.
“No, no, you’re not late,” I said. (He was, of course. But only by seven minutes or so.) As I rose from my stool, my handbag,
which had been resting on my lap, fell to the floor. When I bent to pick it up, I could hear the oceanic roar of my own rushing blood.
“Have you already ordered a drink?” Bangs asked. “Or, or, shall we sit down?”
“No, I haven’t. Let’s sit down.”
We returned to the girl with the navel, who wanted to know were we smoking or nonsmoking?
Bangs looked at me. “You want smoking, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I … I don’t mind not.”
“Oh, all right. No smoking then.”
We sat down, and first I, then he, made noisy little exhalations of air—the kind that are meant to indicate the restoration of calm and contentment after a great hubbub:
haaa.
We had been given menus, and Bangs said that we ought to look at them straightaway because he was starving. For a few moments, we studied our glazed texts in silence. Then, fearful of letting a pause become an unbridgeable gap, I said, “That’s quite a jacket you have there, Bangs.”
Bangs seemed pleased by my comment and, for the next several minutes, he became quite enlivened on the subject of his outerwear. The jacket, it turned out, was one of ten similar garments that he owned. He collected them. “Not because I’m a fan of baseball,” he said. “They’re just cool, aren’t they?”
I nodded. “Yes,” I said. “Very.”
Looking back on my date with Bangs, I am always particularly excruciated by the memory of this exchange about the jacket. There were other, much starker humiliations to follow. But, for some reason, this is the moment to which I keep returning, the moment that makes me clench my fists and hum out loud. Is it my feigning approval of a hideous jacket that offends
me? Or my acquiescence to Bangs’s use of teenybopper terminology? Both those things, I suppose. But even more, I think, the motivation behind them—my desire to have Bangs like me.
We struggled on. Bangs told me about some of the places he had acquired his jackets and, after that, we had a frank exchange of views on the “freedom fighter” mural that Pabblem had recently proposed for the main school playground. (Bangs thought it was quite controversial but might be fun.) Then the waitress came and we ordered our lunch. There was an anxious lull between making and receiving our orders but, happily, I thought to ask Bangs about the new maths textbooks that had recently arrived for his GCSE classes. This proved a fertile topic for discussion, and his opinion of the new books carried us right through our appetisers and our main courses. Things went so swimmingly, in fact, that when the waitress came by to ask us if we would like anything else, Bangs smiled warmly across the table and suggested that we skip dessert and repair to his flat for a coffee. I hesitated only a moment. “Certainly,” I said. “Why not?”
We split the bill. Bangs calculated in his head that my half came to £23.45 plus £1.64 tip (or £2.34, “if I wanted to be generous”). Then he patted his thighs and winked. “Okay, shall we go?”
Perhaps the wine had befuddled me. Perhaps I was clinging to an idea that things would improve. Perhaps I simply couldn’t bear the idea of returning to my flat, with my hair still stiff from the hairdresser’s, to lie on my bed and watch horse racing for the rest of the afternoon. “Yes,” I said, standing up. “Let’s.”
Sheba and I had an argument about children, once. We were talking about my retirement, and I made a jokey remark about how desolate it was going to be.
“Oh, don’t say that,” Sheba said. She looked genuinely pained. But her remark irritated me. I felt that I was being shut up.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I asked. “It’s the truth. I am a dried-up old lady with no husband, very few friends, no children. If I’d had just one child …”

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