It Had to Be You

‘I’d say I’d come over, James … oh, I do wish Surrey wasn’t the wrong side of London … but the awful thing is … well, I suppose death is never exactly convenient, but I’m off to Copenhagen first thing in the morning, I’ve got this ridiculous six-day tour, so here I am completely unable to even provide a shoulder to cry on … Well, the last concert’s Tuesday night in Dresden but then next Wednesday … no … no, nothing … Well, I was going to say that Valerie and I were going to have a couple of days in Ghent … Ghent. You know, where they took the bad news to from Aix … No, a long time ago, and in a poem, nothing to worry about. Look, I can get back Wednesday, so Thursday or Friday next week would be fine … It was only a couple of days, little chance to relax, it’s no big deal … Well it is actually a bigger shame that your wife has died. And James, have you been drinking? … Not slurring exactly, but I can tell … Don’t get upset, James, I’m saying it because I think you’d be sorry if you felt you hadn’t been dignified throughout … Yes, goodb … Wait a minute, Valerie’s waving.’

‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘Ask him if I can do anything. Anything.’

‘You know he’ll say no.’

‘Ask.’

‘Hello. Yes, Valerie wonders if she can do anything … anything … I thought that’s what you’d say but don’t try to be a hero. Well, she’s here, waiting, ready … Fine. James, I’ll phone every day. And James. I’m doing the Schumann in Helsinki, the one she loves, the piano concerto. I’ll be dedicating it to her now.’

Charles put the phone down abruptly and burst into tears. Valerie went to him and held him tight. They stood there, motionless, sharing silent tears as they had rarely shared anything in recent years. Behind them, unnoticed, beyond the mullioned windows, the horizon rose slowly towards the evening sun.

James didn’t want to phone Helen from the living room. It would be tactless, tonight, to speak to her with Deborah’s radiant wedding photo smiling at him from the top of the piano. Also, the sight of his two older brothers, one at each side of the wedding photo, would have unnerved him. He decided to use the main guest bedroom, which he regarded as neutral ground.

He took his glass with him, topped up with a little gin and quite a lot of tonic. He’d been shaken by Charles’s knowing that he’d been drinking. It didn’t matter so much with Helen, but still … he didn’t want to seem weak. He did feel weak, though. He needed the glass at his side.

The sky was beginning to turn a soft, faint, misty pink. He went into the guest bedroom. It smelt of emptiness and perfection. Over the bed there was a beautiful long mirror which made the room look quite large. The walls were salmon pink. On the bed there was a profusion of cushions, and beside the bed there was a carefully chosen selection of books. How Charlotte would snort. He flinched at the thought of Charlotte snorting. The thought of what she might be snorting terrified him.

His heart was pumping. What a day this had been for the pumping of his heart.

He thought, just for a few seconds, about taking all his clothes off. It was a habit they had, to talk on the phone stark naked. It was one of the things that turned them on. There popped into his mind unbidden and unwelcome, the picture of that time, in his office, under the Hammersmith Flyover, when he’d stayed late to plan his polystyrene presentation and had taken all his clothes off and sat there starkers in the dark, the slatted blinds down on his windows and only the faint sodium glow from the street lamps shining on the filing cabinets, and he had phoned her and they had chatted and he’d had the most enormous hard-on, and suddenly the office had been flooded with light and there had been Marcia staring at him and blushing like a beetroot, and she had said, ‘Oh, sorry. I’ve left my diary somewhere. Golly.’

His erection had slowly subsided, and he had said, ‘Sorry, Marcia. It’s a thing Deborah and I do to keep our marriage exciting,’ and she had repeated, ‘Golly.’

How could he sack the only woman in England who still said ‘Golly’?

He abandoned the thought immediately. Helen wouldn’t be expecting him to ring so she wouldn’t be naked, and, in any case, it would be utterly bad form, it wouldn’t be – that word again – seemly. He broke out into a cold sweat at the very thought of it, took a steadying sip of his drink, and dialled Helen’s number.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘You sound … I don’t know … breathless. Tense. Shaky.’

It always amazed him how sensitive she was to every nuance of his existence.

‘Yes, well … something’s happened, Helen.’ Adjectives flew through his mind like a flock of starlings. Good news. Bad news. Sad news. Amazing news. Shocking news. Startling news. Incredible news. None of them suitable, none of them quite right. Stick to the facts. ‘Helen, Deborah’s dead.’

Silence. Words whirring through her mind. Thoughts and emotions churning uncontrollably. No social formula in which to clothe her naked feelings. He sensed it all, and he felt for her. He knew what it was like.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, sorry, I … I’m dumbfounded, James. Deborah, dead? How?’

‘Car crash. Head on. Instant.’

‘Well, I’m glad of that.’

‘Yes, so am I. That it was instant.’

‘Yes, that’s good.’

‘She won’t have suffered.’

‘No, that’s good.’

‘I don’t expect she even had time to know it was happening.’

‘Well, I hope not.’

It was the only aspect of the thing on which they could express any pleasure or agreement, so it wasn’t surprising that they laboured the point.

He didn’t know what else to say, and it was clear that she didn’t either. Well, what could she say? That she was sorry? That she was glad?

‘How exactly did it happen?’

She didn’t want to know. It was irrelevant. And he didn’t want to tell her. It was pointless. But there was no other way to deal with it, and he heard himself starting off on the tale yet again. The Porsche. Diss.

‘One odd thing, she—’

Suddenly he realised that he didn’t want to tell Helen about the mystery of the red Prada shoes.

‘She what?’

‘Nothing.’

To tell her would seem like a betrayal of Deborah, a revelation of a secret. This surprised him.

‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’

Oh, God.

‘No, I was just going to say that she always thought East Anglia was flat and boring, so I’m surprised she was going there.’

It sounded lame, but he just couldn’t mention the shoes.

‘Oh. Right.’

She knew that he hadn’t been going to say that. He could hear it in her voice. He could even sense that she was thinking of saying, ‘Maybe she has a lover there,’ but had decided not to say it. And, in thinking that she was thinking of saying that, he articulated the thought to himself for the first time. There really was no other explanation for the red shoes.

One of them had to say something pretty quickly, or this conversation was going to be a disaster.

If only she was there. If only he could kiss that small, slightly pouty, deeply sexy mouth. If only they didn’t need words. For this emotional situation, there were no words.