The Marriage Diaries Page 15

  “I don't want you getting the idea that it's always that easy, Leo,” I said, back on the sofa.

  “Yeah, yeah,” he replied, handling the wet diaper. “This thing's as heavy as a medicine ball.” He threw it at Andrew, who rolled off the chair to avoid touching it.

  After a while, I got onto the subject of Uma Thursday. I found that that was happening a lot lately. Somehow it was easier without having Ludo there. He was such a heavy moral presence, it would have been like discussing your penchant for water sports with Kofi Annan. I got into it by bringing up Uma's surprise appearance at Celeste's party.

  “She's got a new job. They have an entertainment-roundup-cum-celebrity-gossip slot, and she fills it.”

  “Pretty glam,” said Leo sarcastically.

  “About as glam as my Woman's Hour performances.”

  “I like those,” said Andrew. “You can download them from the BBC website. I told Alice about it, and now you're big in Mauritius. Do you get hate mail?”

  “Not much from Mauritius, but they're a gentle people, slow to wrath.”

  “We're straying,” said Leo. “You obviously have a deep psychological need to talk about this woman, but you say that all you do is walk home with her for twenty minutes on Mondays and then spend the rest of the week fantasizing about it.”

  “Not just that. She's been round to the apartment.”

  “With the contraceptive kids,” said Andrew.

  “But my point is,” said Leo, “that we still don't know if you want anything more than … whatever it is you have at the moment.”

  “I don't have anything at the moment. That's the problem. I don't mean to come on all … feminine, but my life sucks. I don't show it, because, well, whenever I see you lot, and Ludo, I sort of cheer up. It's like that joke about the Irishman who tried to commit suicide by taking an overdose of tranquilizers but then felt better after the first one and … Well, you get it. When it's just me, or just me and Harry, I'm down—I mean, really down. And it seems sometimes that all I ever do is wheel Harry around in the rain and cook dinners for Celeste she doesn't want.”

  “And you think that Uma will somehow make it better? That's crazy talk,” said Leo. “Do you have any idea what you want from her, with her?”

  “I have an idea,” said Andrew.

  I ignored him. “Look, I think that what I want is to have a really deep flirtation, the sort where everything you say is charged up, and you feel your whole body alive and tingling, ready to spring, ready for anything. I want that feeling of anxiety and dread and exultation. But I don't ever actually want to spring. I want to pull back from the edge, once I've felt the vertigo.”

  “But where do you draw the line?” asked Leo. “These are dangerous territories. Bad things can happen here.”

  “Yeah,” joined in Andrew. “I mean, is necking this side or the other side?”

  “Oh, necking,” I said, “is definitely on the other side. I mean, it's the first bit of the other side. Everything short of necking is on this side.”

  Andrew: “What does that leave you?”

  Me: “The bit I most want is the moment just before the neck, when you begin to move imperceptibly toward each other, and your eyes begin to close and your mouth open. And you don't even have to be touching, you could be feet apart.”

  Andrew: “And then what?”

  Me: “And then what, what?”

  Leo: “What do you do after this pre-kiss bit, if you don't kiss?”

  Me: “Just that—you don't kiss.”

  Andrew: “So you leave her sort of dangling there, while you change the subject to football or diapers?”

  Me: “If necessary.”

  Leo: “Is groping on this side?”

  Me: “What do you mean by groping?”

  Leo: “Touching the breasts, in a nonaccidental, pleasure-oriented way.”

  Me: “Well, I'd say that touching the breasts outside her jumper or blouse or whatever she's wearing, that would be this side, and touching a bare breast, particularly if it involved an erotic tweaking of the nipple, would be on the other.”

  Andrew, laughing: “Bullshit! A grope's better—I mean, worse— than a snog any day. Inside or outside, nipple tweaked or un-tweaked. Anyway, I'm not sure that tweaking, the tweaking of anything, can ever be erotic.”

  Leo: “I think I'd have to concur with my learned colleague. In the view of the court, a grope is on the other side, one step further back, if anything, than necking.”

  Me: “Okay, okay, so I was trying to pull a fast one. I don't really need the groping. I'm happy with the intense flirting, the pre-kiss, and a general air of tragedy. Brief Encounter kind of thing, but with fewer hats and advanced twenty-first-century deodorants. Can we agree that all of that is okay?”

  We'd been joking around, but now Leo made a conscious effort to be more serious.

  “I'm making a conscious effort to be more serious now,” he said, “but how many of us can ever draw back from that prekiss bit? I know exactly what you mean about it: it's magical. But no one ever stops there. It's like what we always say about drinking. You have the first three or four, and everything's wonderful. If only you could switch to tonic water or—”

  “Low-calorie lemonade and Angostura's bitters is surprisingly nice,” said Andrew.

  “Shut up, Andrew. But we never do, because we're intoxicated and we can't make proper judgments. You'll be the same with Uma, assuming the whole thing isn't some huge misunderstanding—”

  “I've thought about that, and it's possible. I could be wrong. Maybe she wants a friend or just someone to pass the time with. Could be, could be. But the balance of probabilities dips down slightly on the side of her wanting to make the beast.”

  “Okay, we'll trust your judgment on that, but don't think that your pathetic attempt at realism there will get you out of the shit with us if it turns out that she loves you for your mind alone. What was I saying? Uma, pre-kiss, kiss. Yeah, if you do ever get into range, and she gives you the come-hither, then you're gonna grip and grapple, and that's all there is to it. Your body will speak the ancient language, the old gods will fire you, the ancient rites—”

  “Enough with the old gods and ancient rites, you prize ass. You forget I've got the counterbalance. Harry, Celeste. I love them.”

  Leo looked at me curiously; Andrew laughed.

  At about one o'clock, I told them about Mumford and Chris Rushby. They understood enough not to try to play it down or attribute it simply to the way boys are. They knew that betrayal counts against you. Andrew said that being good at sport had saved him from the animals at his school. Leo didn't want to talk about his experiences. Reading between the lines, I guessed that he, with his twisted back and strange, sad, long face, might have been a kind of Mumford.

  We drank till two. The rule was that we'd carry on until Celeste got in (she always went out for our irregular football evenings, and I can't blame her; indeed, thank her), and that usually meant around eleven, twelve if we were lucky, but that night she was late. I didn't worry. She'd said her mother, Nosferata, Queen of the Un-dead, was up in town, so they'd probably be out slaying children till dawn. So the boys stayed until the beer and champagne had run dry.

  “Did we win?” said Andrew, turning as they were going out the door.

  “As ever,” I said, putting my arm around his shoulders, “football was the winner.”

  PRADAPRADAPRADAPRADAGUCO 14

  “Milo?”

  “Who's that?”

  “Celeste.”

  “Please be quick, darling, I've put Jude Law on hold.”

  “The Hempel. You said you could get me a rate?”

  Yes, I'd been thinking about it and nothing else. And now here I was.

  “Naughty girl! Tell me all about it.”

  “I thought you had Jude Law on hold?”

  “He can wait.”

  In the end, it wasn't such a great deal, but he guaranteed me, us, a good room. I had a matter-of-fact cell pho
ne conversation with Ludo. Where and when. He sounded subdued, almost defeated.

  After that, I needed some cheering up, so I arranged a lunch with Stephanie Phylum-Crater. She's back in town after her Hollywood debacle. Can't call it a debacle to her face, but that's what it amounts to. And she'd gone with such high hopes, after her low-budget Britflick triumphs. Personally I think her mistake was to throw all her energies into finding the right celebrity partner rather than the right script. In the end, the list of stars she hadn't dated (that is, screwed) was very much shorter than the roll call of her (admittedly brief) conquests. Richard Gere was forced to take out an ad in Variety to deny that they were an item and then a week later another to deny that he had turned her down. She stalked Kevin Costner (yes, she was that desperate) and falsely claimed on a talk show that Kenneth Branagh had exposed himself to her in his Jacuzzi.

  The bestiality film may have got her some tabloid attention, but it was never going to rake in the Oscars. She was generally perceived to have let nobody down as an alien in the last series of the X-Files, but whatever good that might have done her was undermined by the claim by David Duchovny that she had cured him of his sex addiction.

  Well, now she was home. We'd been to school together, and so there was no need for politeness or preliminaries. We were having a salad in the bar of my health club. Steph was fond of it because it had a big window onto the gym, and she liked to see who was there. She was going for a just-out-of-rehab look, but she was a little plump to pull it off. In fact, she looked in prime health, and I suspected that the rehab stories were another failed publicity gambit.

  “Branagh?”

  “Look, Celeste, he was in the Jacuzzi, but I may have associated his face with someone else's thing. Easy mistake to make. It was distinctive, though, more like a piggy-wig's tail than your normal cock.” She made a little corkscrewing motion with her index finger. “And how's lovely Sean?”

  I hadn't told her about the developments.

  “Fine. I think I might be having an affair.”

  “Oh, good. I was dreading having to spend lunch talking about Hollywood or how much better it is doing fringe theater over a pub in Brixton.”

  “Can we do that briefly?”

  “Hollywood splendid; pub theater poor, bordering on the fucking awful.”

  “Oh, sorry. Nothing else happening?”

  “I've got an audition for a Teletubby Don't laugh.”

  “Which one?”

  “The red one.”

  “Oh, Po.”

  “I said, don't laugh.”

  “At least you're not Tinky Winky”

  “Small mercies. So who's your affair with?”

  “It's not really an affair yet. Not until tomorrow. Ludo Moss.”

  “Do I know him?”

  “Big, quiet fellow. Often sulking in a corner during parties. Lives with Katie Castle.”

  “Katie Castle? Of course, Penny Moss, Ludo Moss. Fashion. I've bought their clothes. Good for weddings. So they're not married?”

  “She acts as if they are, but no.”

  “That's something.”

  “Something.”

  “But you are.”

  “What?”

  “Married.”

  “Well-spotted, but then, of course, you were a bridesmaid.”

  “God, I remember it well. I think that Portaloo thing you hired was the most disgusting place I've ever had sex.”

  “I think mine's Detroit.”

  “Yuck. Remind me again why you're having this affair, or going to have it, or whatever you're doing.”

  I told her all about it.

  “I'm still not clear,” she said. “Are you seeing Ludo because you think Sean's been screwing this Uma whatsit, or would you be seeing him anyway?”

  “You can never know, can you? I mean, the thing is, we only have one life at a time, and you can't conduct experiments to find out.”

  “That's profound.”

  “Not for nothing was I head girl.”

  “Is that a double negative?”

  “No.”

  “Not for nothing was I not. Oh dear, is that? Don't answer. But tomorrow's the big night?”

  “Could be; should be.”

  “I don't mean to come across all moral, but what about little … thingy.”

  “Harry. Don't think I haven't thought about it. I wouldn't do anything to harm him. I mean, I don't want to leave Sean or anything. It's just that I want to have sex with Ludo. That can't be wrong, can it?”

  It was seeing Steph that made me talk that way, made me think that way. She was as unshockable as a brothel keeper. In fact, I was deeply troubled by it all, and the only way I could face the moral issues was by not facing them.

  After a while, we got on to interiors. The builders were due to start in a week, and I still hadn't settled on colors, beyond narrowing the spectrum down to the range from taupe to kittiwake gray. And the kitchen was a nightmare. Everyone else we knew had either limestone or limestone-colored composite surfaces, but Sean had, extraordinarily for him (given that he's taken no interest at all in the project up to now), put down his foot.

  “It's soluble,” he'd said.

  “What?”

  “It's water-fucking-soluble, this stuff.” He was fingering a test square of the composite. “I spoke to the suppliers. They don't recommend it for work surfaces. It stains. And then it dissolves. We're not having it.”

  “But Seema and Charles have got it. And Sally and Julian. And Nicky and Finn.”

  I was aware that I was sounding whiny and pathetic, which was normally his job. But I knew what he was going to say next, and I had no counter.

  “Look, if you want to start cooking, then you can have whatever surface you want. In a year, it'll be a dirty puddle of sludge, and try slicing your tomatoes on that, but if you want me to carry on cooking, then I'm having something that retains its molecular structure when introduced to water.”

  “You're such a pig,” I said, but it was no use. So it had to be black granite. Luckily I found a plain one, so the surface wouldn't look too much like a war memorial. But still. Pig.

  “Shame about the limestone,” said Steph. “Are you Viking everything?”

  “Of course.”

  “Floor?”

  “American black walnut.”

  “Very nice. But you know it's—”

  “If you're about to say on its way out, stop now, because it's too late.”

  “Fine. Oh, look! Unless I'm mistaken—and she's your friend, not mine—isn't that Katie Castle through there, on the crosstrainer?”

  I looked round through the big, tinted plate glass window to the rows of exercise machines. And yes, there was Katie in a sweatband. She was obviously letting herself go, because rather than the tight Lycra I'd have expected, she was dressed in loose pants and a baggy top. Her face was bright red, and I imagined, but could not see, the drops of sweat falling from her brow, like a blocked gutter in the rain. Just then, she caught my eye, smiled, and waved. I waved back. Stephanie put a whole cherry tomato into her mouth and popped it, thoughtfully.

  I was exactly on time at The Hempel. I despise women who are always late for dates, following some stupid rule they've read in a magazine. But then I always walk out if whoever I'm meeting is more than fifteen minutes late. You only have to do that once, and then they learn.

  I walked down the stairs from the ersatz Zen lobby, about as convincing, with its little flames and empty spaces, as a Bangkok Rolex. Ludo was already there, standing in no-man's-land between the tables and the bar. How long had he been stranded there, not knowing where to go, how to be? He was wearing chinos and a dark jacket. As usual, he looked as if he could flex and rip the fabric to shreds. He seemed more relieved than anything to see me arrive, his stretcher bearer. He took my hands in his and kissed me.

  “You look beautiful,” he said. I'd certainly tried: I was wearing a midnight blue top in silk georgette that fell casually off one shoulder (the righ
t, my best), and a turquoise-and-silver choker and the shortest skirt I owned.

  “So do you,” I said, and he guffawed, but handsomely.

  We took our drinks to a corner.

  “This is quite some place,” he said.

  “But not your sort of place?”

  “I don't know what my sort of place is. I thought I knew once, but not anymore.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, I once thought that my place was on an island. I always thought that I hated London, and … things happened, and I took a conservation job. But, well, although it was beautiful, and despite the fact that I had a sense of purpose, I was lonely. It was a blow, in a way, to my self-esteem. I wasn't who I thought I was. I thought I was rugged and independent. I thought I carried everything I needed within myself. But I was wrong. It turned out I was just a city boy.”

  “I'm glad.”

  “So am I, I suppose.”

  We talked for a while. It was okay. Nothing important was said, but it was more than just inane chitchat. We ate a plate of noodles and some wonton from the bar: not a real meal but enough to keep hunger in the background, out of the way. Eventually we got round to it.

  “You booked the room.”

  It could have been a question or a statement.

  “You know I did. Do you want to … see it?”

  He hesitated for a second; less than a second.

  “Yes.”

  We took the tiny elevator. The room itself was not exactly enormous, but that's not what you go to The Hempel for. There was a bottle of champagne. Ludo went to the bathroom. I read the card.

  Enjoy yourself,

  Love,

  Milo

  I put it in my pocket and poured two glasses.

  “Champagne?” said Ludo. “It wasn't you, was it? I should have … arranged, or … something.”

  “It just comes with the room,” I said. I knew he wouldn't like the idea of Milo's intruding in this way.

  We sat on the side of the bed. Ludo didn't have his jacket on anymore. My shoulders were bare. I shivered. He put his arm around me. And then I started to cry. It wasn't what I expected at all.