It was uncharitable, but she couldn’t help wishing there was more wrong with George. That he needed her more. But in no time at all he was back out in the studio, laying bricks and sawing wood.
She felt as if she was lost at sea. George was on his island over there. And David was on another island. And Katie. And Jamie. All of them with solid ground under their feet. And she was drifting between them, the tide slowly dragging her farther and farther away.
She drove over to David’s house the following week and parked round the corner. She was about to get out of the car when she realized she couldn’t do it. When they’d first got together it seemed like the beginning of a new life, something different and exciting, an escape. But she could see it now for what it was, an affair, like any other affair, tawdry and cheap, a selfish compensation for the mess her real life had become.
She imagined sitting in the staff room at St. John’s, drinking tea and eating Garibaldi biscuits with Sally and Bea and Miss Cottingham and felt, for the first time, as if she bore some kind of stain, that they would be able to look at her and see what she had been doing.
She was being silly. She knew that. They were no different from other people. She knew, for a fact, that Bea’s son was in some kind of trouble with drugs. But it seemed wrong that she should be making love with David one afternoon and teaching children to read the following morning. And if she had to make the choice between the two she would have chosen David without hesitation, but that seemed even worse.
She drove away and rang David later that evening to apologize. He was charming and sympathetic and said he understood what she must be going through. But he didn’t. She could hear it in his voice.
80
George was lying on the bed with his trousers off, having his dressing changed.
The practice nurse was rather attractive, if a little on the plump side. He had always liked women in uniforms. Samantha, that was her name. Cheerful, too, without being talkative.
In truth, he was going to miss these sessions when they came to an end in a couple of weeks’ time. It was like having one’s hair cut. Except that he always had his hair cut by an elderly Cypriot man and it was a lot less painful.
The nurse peeled back the large plaster over the wound. “OK, Mr. Hall. Time to grit your teeth.”
George took hold of the edges of the bed.
The nurse pulled the end of the bandage. The first couple of feet of pink ribbon came away smoothly. Then it snagged. George did anagrams of the word
“No apology needed.”
The nurse held the old dressing up. It looked like a large conker that had been soaked in blood and lemon curd. She dropped it into the little swing bin by the side of the bed. “Let’s get you a clean one.”
George lay back and closed his eyes.
He rather liked the pain now that he had got used to it. He knew what it was going to be like and how long it was going to last. And as it ebbed away his head felt unnaturally clear for five or ten minutes, as if his brain had been hosed clean.
From a nearby room he heard someone say, “Scoliosis of the spine.”
He was relieved about the wedding. It was sad for Katie. Or perhaps it was a relief for her, too. They had not been able to talk much during her visit. And to be honest they rarely talked about that kind of thing. Though Ray did seem a little strange at the hospital, which only served to confirm his uneasiness about the relationship.
Either way George was glad that the house was not going to be invaded by a marquee full of strangers. He was still feeling a little too fragile to relish the prospect of standing up and speechifying.
Jean seemed rather relieved, too.
Poor Jean. He really had put her through the wringer. She had not seemed like her usual self over the past few days. She was clearly still worried about him. Seeing that carpet every day probably did not help.
But he was out of the bedroom, they were having conversations, and he was able to do a few chores round the house. When he was a little fitter he would take her out for dinner. He had heard good reports about that new restaurant in Oundle. Excellent fish, apparently.
“There,” said Samantha, “that’s you done.”
“Thank you,” said George.
“Come on, let’s sit you up.”
He would buy Jean some flowers on the way home, something he had not done in a very long time. That would cheer her up.
Then he would ring the carpet fitters.
81
Jamie was waiting for a prospective buyer in the Prince’s Avenue flat, the one where he’d met Tony for the first time.
The owners were moving to Kuala Lumpur. They were tidy and childless, thank goodness. No abstract expressionistic ballpoint pen on the skirting boards, no scree of toys on the dining-room floor (Shona was showing a couple round the Finchley four-bed when the woman twisted her ankle on a Power Ranger Dino Thunder Bike). Worked in the city and hardly touched the place from what he could see. You could have licked the cooker. IKEA furniture. Bland prints in brushed steel frames. Soulless but salable.
He walked into the kitchen, touched the paintwork with the tips of his fingers and remembered watching Tony with a brush in his hand, before they’d even talked, when he was still a beautiful stranger.
Jamie could see now, with absolute clarity, what he’d done.
He’d bided his time. He’d got away. He’d built a little world in which he felt safe. And it was orbiting far out, unconnected to anyone. It was cold and it was dark and he had no idea how to make it swing back toward the sun.
There’d been a moment, in Peterborough, shortly after Katie punched him, when he realized that he needed these people. Katie, Mum, Dad, Jacob. They drove him up the wall sometimes. But they’d been with him all the way. They were a part of him.
Now he’d lost Tony and he was drifting. He needed a place he could go when he was in trouble. He needed someone he could call in the small hours.
He’d fucked it up. Those horrible scenes in the dining room. His mother saying, “You know nothing.” She was right. They were strangers. He’d made them into strangers. Deliberately. What right did he have to tell them how they should run their lives? He had made damn sure they had no right to tell him how he should run his.
The bell rang.
Shit.
He took a deep breath, counted to ten, put his selling brain in and answered the door to a man with a very obvious toupee.
82
Katie had just finished the washing up.
Jacob was in bed. And Ray was sitting at the kitchen table putting new batteries into the cordless phone. She turned round and leant against the sink, drying her hands on a tea towel.
Ray clicked the back of the phone into place. “We have to do something.”
