To Have and to Hold Page 14

  He nodded.

  ‘Look, I’ll begin,’ she said. She leaned over and took off his jacket. ‘You do one and I’ll do one.’

  Still he didn’t move. She paused, then she got up and pulled off her T-shirt and jeans. Underneath she was wearing a pink, lacy one-piece thing. He looked away quickly. ‘That’s nice,’ he said.

  ‘Ollie bought it.’

  He shifted. ‘Oh.’

  She sat down beside him. Then she sighed and asked: ‘Aren’t we allowed to make this real?’

  He didn’t reply. He heard the sigh of the silk as she crossed her legs. A fly buzzed against the window-pane. He put his head into his hands.

  ‘Cheer up, ducks.’ Viv’s voice had changed. ‘You’d like one of the other girls?’

  He shook his head and spoke into his hands. ‘I’d like you.’

  ‘That’s the ticket.’ She ruffled his hair. ‘It’s always hard the first time, isn’t it? Sorry, fourth, fifth time.’ She started unbuttoning his shirt. ‘Still, we pride ourselves we run a friendly establishment here; we really care for our customers.’ She threw his shirt aside and leant down to pull off his shoes. ‘Specially nice respectable gents like yourself; nice class of shoe.’ She flung them aside and pulled off his socks. ‘I’d expect you’re an executive, am I right? And very nicely built too; you keep yourself in trim, I dare say.’ She stroked his chest. ‘Mmm . . . bet you’re a terror on the rugger pitch, bit of a terror in other departments too, I wouldn’t be surprised . . .’ He lifted himself up and she started pulling off his trousers. ‘Hmmm . . . yes, I thought so . . . you’re not as shy as you look –’

  ‘Viv!’

  ‘What?’

  He pulled her to him and cried out: ‘Don’t!

  ‘This is a nice idea,’ said Ann, as the waiter showed them to a table. Ollie had chosen a Greek restaurant near Charlotte Street, where he often came to lunch. She looked around at the very lurid Mediterranean landscapes on the walls. ‘Very authentic. When Ken and I went to Corfu it was all Watney’s on tap and Birmingham accents.’

  Ollie laughed. ‘And the food’s warmer here.’

  ‘Ah yes. Lukewarm moussaka.’

  They sat down. She was wearing a paisley blouse. Her brown hair was brushed, conker-shiny. If he blinked, she could be an unknown woman. For the first time he noticed the faint lines on her forehead, and at the corners of her mouth. He said: ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had a meal alone with you in my life.’

  ‘No.’ She smiled. He thought: she often smiles, very sweetly, but she hardly ever laughs.

  She inspected the menu. He though how people became fixed at first glimpse. The very first time he met her, he’d come down from Keele University with Viv for the weekend and they had had lunch at Ann’s flat. Viv had dropped the casserole and Ann had apologized. Ann became fixed as someone who presumed to be wrong, who busied herself with meals, who had a wide, pale, settled face, as if matronly before her time, he looked at her again, now in her mid-thirties, and thought with surprise: she looks younger now. And more tired, and rather more interesting.

  She said: ‘Nothing much we can do at the moment, is there?’

  He shook his head. ‘We’re waiting in the wings.’ He indicated the menu. ‘What shall we drink?’

  ‘Let’s have a bottle of wine. Let’s live dangerously.’

  He smiled and thought: without Viv, she looks prettier. Viv is like a virtuoso violin; when it’s removed one hears the rather nice tune of Ann, the accompanying piano.

  ‘Why are you smiling?’ she asked.

  He couldn’t tell her, so her said: ‘Dangerously?’

  She nodded. ‘I’m learning.’ She paused, watching some people come into the restaurant and sit down. She said: ‘Viv was the expert at that. I’d be asleep, and she’d creep in and tell me all about it. Once, she’d been out with a Maltese waiter and she came home with love-bites all over her neck. It was a heatwave, and next day Dad said: “Why’re you wearing a scarf in June?”’

  Ollie laughed. ‘She told me about that.’

  Ann ate an olive. ‘Ken’s never bitten my neck.’

  ‘Were you envious?’

  ‘No.’ She paused and took out the stone. She put it in the saucer. ‘Yes. Oh, I didn’t want to be bitten by a waiter, but . . .’ She shrugged. ‘It wasn’t just boys, it was the risks. The danger.’ She took another olive. ‘The fun.’

  The waiter brought the wine and filled their glasses.

  Ann smiled. ‘Whenever we had chips for tea she’d gobble hers up, and I’d save mine till last. So she’d see me eating them and be jealous. But they never tasted the same.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘They’d gone cold.’

  Ollie burst out laughing. ‘Oh, she’s always lived in the fast lane, chip-wise.’ He pointed to the menu. ‘Go on, have some today. Make up for lost time.’

  Ann didn’t look at the menu. Instead she asked: ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘About all this?’ He paused. ‘No.’ There was a silence. She looked down at the menu. He said: ‘Yes.’

  She nodded. ‘It’s worst for you. You don’t gain anything at all.’

  He asked: ‘Do you mind?’

  ‘I thought I didn’t, but . . .’

  ‘But what?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s silly.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘It’s just . . . I saw them yesterday. And I wish I hadn’t.’

  Ollie froze. ‘Yesterday?’

  ‘I’d come from Paddington Station, and I was going to the bus stop. I saw them coming out of their, well . . .’ She took another sip of wine. ‘They didn’t see me.’

  For a moment, Ollie couldn’t speak. He felt his scalp prickle, as if his skull were going to burst.

  He thought: You lying bitch. You told me you’d stopped.

  Ellie had taken the day off work. She sat in her room with a cloth over her head, inhaling Friar’s Balsam. Funny, she thought: you can always tell you’re ill when you start to miss your family. She breathed in deeply. She even longed for her little brother, so maybe she’d got flu.

  Nobody told you how lonely London could be. Outside, the street was quiet. Her room was above a parade of shops in Crouch End but in the afternoons there were just a few mums with pushchairs. In Covent Garden, on the other hand, the people were all in Golf convertibles, with accompanying passengers, or else they were overweight and from Ohio and asking her the location of streets she’d never heard of.

  She thought she heard the bell ring, but she decided it was just her imagination and her blocked head. But it rang again, twice. She removed the cloth, put on her dressing gown and hurried to the window. She opened it and looked down.

  It was Ollie. He waited below. Her stupid heart thumped, and she noticed for the first time that his hair was thinning on top. She’d never seen him from this angle, he usually towered above her.

  ‘Coming!’ she called, and rushed to the mirror. Her face was pink and damp; her eyes piggy. Too late. She ran down the stairs and let him in.

  ‘I had to see you,’ he said.

  ‘It’s OK,’ she replied. ‘It’s only a cold.’

  He put his arms around her.

  ‘That’ll get the tongues wagging,’ she said, trying to laugh.

  ‘What?’

  ‘If you started sneezing too.’

  ‘Ellie –’

  He stopped. He looked terrible. She led him up to her room. It looked so exposed, with her smalls soaking in a bowl and her Soup-for-One packet not thrown away. To divert his attention she pointed to her collection of china and glass cats on the mantelpiece.

  ‘See,’ she said. ‘I am a cat-lover.’

  He didn’t reply. He sat down heavily on the bed.

  She asked: ‘What is it?’

  He paused. ‘I feel so lonely.’ His voice sounded strangled.

  ‘Here, let’s have some tea.’ She went over to the kettle.

  ‘No thanks. Just had lunch.’

  ‘What
nationality?’ It was one of their routines.

  ‘Greek.’

  She removed her inhalation bowl and sat down beside him. ‘You can’t mean that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You’re lonely.’ She pointed to her copy of Capital. ‘There’s always a warm, non-smoking lesbian.’

  Ollie smiled thinly. He said: ‘I shouldn’t have taken you out, should I?’

  She looked down at her slippers. ‘No, but . . .’

  ‘I shouldn’t.’

  ‘What’ve we done? A couple of lunches. An evening at the pictures. I’m just a shoulder to cry on.’

  He said: ‘You’re not.’

  ‘I am.’

  He turned to her and started stroking her damp hair, pushing it back from her face. She said gently: ‘Don’t.’ He went on; he hooked a strand and laid it behind her ear. She said in a low voice: ‘You’re married. You’ve got two lovely little girls.’

  He said: ‘Remember what I said, about trust?’

  She nodded. She remembered every word he’d said to her.

  ‘About you being able to trust people?’ he said. ‘Believe in them? You do, don’t you?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘That’s why I want to be here,’ he said. He touched her face. ‘I shouldn’t be.’

  ‘No,’ she said.

  He got up and went to the door. He did it so abruptly she was left off-balance.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ she asked.

  ‘Must go.’ He opened the door.

  She got up and pulled at his arm. ‘You could at least tell me why.’ He stared at her. She glared at him. ‘You come barging in here,’ she said, her voice rising to a croak, ‘you don’t even have the decency to tell me why, and then you bugger off.’

  He moved away and leaned against the door frame. Her throat hurt, her head throbbed. She glared at him.

  ‘Can’t you understand why?’ His voice was quiet now. She turned away; she could not bear to see his face. He said: ‘I must go before I do something stupid.’

  He moved away and went down the stairs. She shut the door, went over to the bed and sat down. Ridiculously, she burst into tears. She must have a temperature.

  She told herself: don’t be daft. She got up and filled the kettle. Her inhalation was lukewarm now; she would have to make some more. She held up the bottle; she couldn’t keep her hand steady and the writing was dancing – yes, two tablespoons. She removed her bowl of smalls from the sink and rinsed out the balsam basin.

  The kettle had just boiled when there was a knock on the door. She opened it. He took her in his arms; she held him tightly. He was crying too. They stepped back, staggering, off-balance, into the room.

  It was Easter Sunday and suddenly hot. Flies buzzed over Viv’s compost heap; the bushes rustled as Ollie hid eggs. Ann sat on the rabbit hutch and watched him. He seemed preoccupied. She had thought it was just her fault at lunch on Wednesday – that she never brought out the best in anybody, and that his wit would have flowered with Viv. But he seemed just as tense today. She watched him squatting down to insert a small silver egg into a crack in the wall, and she wondered, with sudden pain, if Ken would ever hide Easter eggs for their child, like this. If, indeed, they ever had one.

  Ollie stood up and glanced swiftly at the kitchen window. She had always found him attractive in a lanky, feminine way. An appealing man. Helpless. The antithesis of Ken. She remembered when the Meadowses had first moved into this house, years ago, and she had offered to make them bedroom curtains. Ollie had come downstairs with the measurements; he had no tape measure and he’d told her: ‘Seven Penguin books by thirteen.’ She remembered Ken’s bemusement.

  It was so hot, almost thundery. There was an oppressive feeling in the air; even the girls were subdued. Ann went in to help Viv, who was moving around the kitchen as if asleep at the controls. Their father and his fiancée were expected for tea. Ken, thank goodness, was still outside, fiddling with the car.

  ‘What can I do?’ she asked. She hadn’t seen Viv since the day of the pink track-suit and she felt grateful that the girls were in the room – they were sitting in the front end of it, so they couldn’t see where Ollie hid the eggs.

  ‘Not much to do,’ said Viv. ‘Dad wants it to look all informal.’

  Not hard to look informal here, Ann would have joked at any other time. She sat down with the girls and opened their Beezer annual. But instead of seeing the cartoons she saw Ken and Viv, unreeling again like a stubborn piece of film: they were walking out of the hotel towards the car. Ken had parked on a yellow line and he had a parking ticket. It was so unlike Ken, that. For the moment it hurt more than anything else.

  ‘Another piece?’ asked Vera. She had brought along a Sachertorte, a speciality of Vienna. They were all sitting at tea.

  ‘No thanks,’ said Ann. ‘I’m getting so fat.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ Vera turned to Ken. ‘A man, he likes a woman to look like a woman, don’t you, Kenneth?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ken. ‘But she should watch her weight.’

  Ann looked at him sharply and turned to Vera. ‘I’d love another piece.’

  Vera cut it for her. She was a tall, well-groomed woman with the sort of handsome face that looked as if it had suffered. There was a stillness about her that impressed Ann. Her father, by contrast, had grown as skittish as a schoolboy.

  ‘I have heard so much about you,’ said Vera, turning to Viv. ‘I may call you Vivien?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Viv. She shook her head at the cake. She had eaten nothing.

  ‘And your little girls,’ Vera went on. ‘I feel so happy, that we are buying a flat nearby here. I hope we shall be getting to know each other. Families are so precious.’

  There was a silence. Ollie sneezed.

  Vera said to Viv: ‘You should give him some oil of camphor.’

  ‘It’s his cold,’ said Viv.

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘He doesn’t want me fussing over him.’

  Ollie nodded. ‘It’s my cold.’

  There was another silence. Ann looked outside. In the garden, the two little girls, clutching their plastic bags, were searching for the eggs.

  Douglas cleared his throat. ‘It’s a lovely little place. Hope you’ll come round.’ He turned to Ann. ‘You too, of course. We both thought: better have a clean sweep.’ He cleared his throat again. ‘New start.’ He held out his plate for some cake. ‘Well I for one enjoy being spoilt. High time too. All those years of baked beans.’

  ‘My darling,’ said Vera. They gazed at each other with such naked love that Ann had to turn away. She looked at the sunlit garden.

  ‘Found them all?’ asked Douglas.

  Ann nodded. ‘They’re climbing over the wall. I expect they’re going to count them in front of the children next door.’

  ‘They’re beautiful, aren’t they?’ said Vera. She turned to Ken. ‘You know, Kenneth, I always love the children. I wanted them, but my first husband – it wasn’t possible. So this great joy was denied me.’

  ‘Vee –’ said Douglas.

  ‘I just tell them that I understand,’ said Vera. ‘If we are a family we should be open together, don’t you think?’

  There was another silence. Ken was tearing up little bits of silver paper – wrappings from an Easter egg. Ollie sneezed again.

  ‘Think it’s flu?’ asked Douglas.

  ‘I’m fine,’ said Ollie.

  ‘It’s the change in the weather,’ said Ken. ‘Suddenly it’s summer.’ He went on shredding up the paper and rolling it into little balls.

  Ann said sharply. ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that.’

  Viv stood up and fetched the kettle. ‘More tea, anybody?’

  Ann turned to her father. ‘So where are you holding the reception?’

  ‘A nice hotel, we thought. Any suggestions?’

  ‘Ask Viv,’ said Ollie suddenly.

  Douglas turned to him surprised. ‘Why?’

  Ollie said: ‘Viv’s
the hotel expert.’

  Douglas turned to Viv. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No!’ she said.

  Nobody spoke. Vera looked from one face to another. Then Viv went to the garden door and closed it. She turned round. ‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she said. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Ken’s hand stopped shredding. Ann didn’t dare move.

  Vera was the first to speak. ‘What wonderful news!’

  Their father said: ‘Well, well.’

  Vera turned to Ollie. ‘Why didn’t you say? Here I was, chattering along –’

  ‘I didn’t know,’ said Ollie flatly.

  Ann jumped up and hugged Viv. For a moment Viv didn’t respond, then she put her arms around her.

  Ollie’s voice asked: ‘How long have you known?’

  Viv spoke into Ann’s hair. ‘A week.’

  ‘A week?’ asked Ken.

  Viv gently pushed Ann back and went to the table. She sat down. Ken hadn’t moved; he was staring at her.

  Their father leaned over and said jovially, to Ollie: ‘Bit of a shock, eh?’

  Ollie turned to Viv. ‘Good of you to let me know.’

  There was a pause. Ann, standing beside the sink, looked at them all sitting motionless at the tea table. The moment was transfixed. There was the scrape of a match as Ken lit a cigarette.

  Viv turned to Ollie. ‘I was going to tell you first, but then I thought: this is a family affair. I wanted to wait till we were all here. Because this belongs to everyone.’

  Her father looked round the table. ‘Have I missed something?’

  Viv said to Ann. ‘You tell them.’

  ‘Me?’ asked Ann.

  ‘It’s your business now, as well as mine.’

  Ann felt the warmth spread into her face. She tried to speak, and began again. ‘You still mean it?’

  Viv nodded gravely, and turned to her father. ‘I’m not keeping the child,’ she said.

  Douglas stared. ‘What?’

  Vera asked: ‘You’re not going to have the baby?’

  ‘I’m going to have it,’ Viv began, and stopped. She looked at Ann.

  Ann cleared her throat. ‘But she’s going to give it to me and Ken.’

  Douglas, wreathed in Ken’s cigarette smoke, looked at Viv. ‘Come again?’

  Vera turned to Ollie: ‘Do you – ?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Ollie. ‘I know about this.’