It Had to Be You

‘Can you come over?’ she asked.

‘Darling, I’d love to see you, of course, God, I long …’ to unroll your tights and kiss your slender thighs, to fondle your pert little breasts, to gently bite your stiff nipples, ‘… to see you. But … it’s not possible tonight. I have phone calls to make. It’s just not possible.’

‘Tomorrow, then?’

‘I think tomorrow’s going to be very difficult too, sweetheart.’ He began to tell her all the things he would have to do tomorrow. The thought of them all, at the end of this long day, exhausted him. He was going to yawn. No. No. He mustn’t.

‘I do so want to see you, darling, but you must see that it’s difficult.’

‘Oh, I do. I do. It’s just … it seems a shame. I want to help you through this.’

‘And I want your help. It’s just …’

It’s just that there’s no acceptable formula for appropriate social behaviour in such circumstances. Couldn’t say that.

‘Look. You finish at lunchtime, don’t you, Fridays? Let’s … I know. I’ll meet you for afternoon tea at Whistler’s Hotel.’

That wouldn’t be too dangerous if somebody saw them. He could take a folder with him and put it on the end of the table, ready to pretend to be discussing business in the unlikely event of anybody he knew being in that slightly raffish hotel.

‘Afternoon tea?’

‘Well, yes. It seems … I don’t know … appropriate.’

‘Well, OK. Yes. Fine. Oh, James.’

So many things in that ‘Oh, James.’ Shock. Sympathy. Amazement. Hope. Frustration. Love. Fear. Desire. Self-doubt. Sorrow too, because she was not a cruel person. So many things, and he could sense them all.

‘Whistler’s at four, then, Friday.’

The light was fading. Wispy clouds were floating very slowly across the sky. They were tinged with subtle colours, mauves and pale yellows and salmon that matched the walls of the spare bedroom. In the north-west the sky was beginning to darken to a fiery red. Islington glowed. Three small boys, normal bedtime suspended, were kicking a football among the parked Audis as they drifted homewards. How could everything be so normal, and so beautiful, on this of all days? He took a large gulp of his drink. He needed it.

It was past ten o’clock now, too early to phone Max and too late to phone anybody else. He realised that he was very hungry. He went to the fridge-freezer, Deborah’s pride and joy – Deborah! Oh, God. He would never see her again.

There were so many bits of things in the fridge section. Delicious leftovers hidden under foil and cling film. He couldn’t cope, couldn’t choose.

He raised his glass to his lips and found that it was empty. He pressed the glass against the fridge freezer and it filled with an avalanche of ice. No. He mustn’t. There was Max to ring.

He dropped the ice into the Belfast sink in the crowded utility room – my God, he’d have to learn to use the washer and the dryer. And the ironing board. He could take things round to Helen but was she an ironer? She didn’t look like an ironer. Five years, five years of sex, and so much he didn’t know about her.

He uncorked a bottle of Brouilly. Well, it was less dangerous than spirits.

He opened a tin of tomato soup, heated it rapidly, began to eat it eagerly. Lovely. There was something in it, some secret ingredient, that made the thought of it irresistible to men. Halfway through, as always, it began to disgust him. He struggled on for a bit, then poured water into the soup to weaken the mixture, and poured it down the sink.

Sardines. He had a craving for sardines. A bit strong for the Brouilly, but this wasn’t an evening for purists.

Halfway through the tin he suddenly felt absolutely disgusted by the taste of tinned sardines. He chucked the tin into the elegantly concealed waste bin.

He began to feel very uncomfortable in the kitchen. It was Deborah’s room, friendly, lived-in, foody, attractive but unpretentious and rather higgledy-piggledy.

He remembered that there was a box of chocolates in the living room. It was up to him to finish them now.

No need now to defer to Deborah’s wants. He chose the marzipan one from both levels, chewed them greedily, not popping them into his mouth whole as Deborah insisted. Manners hardly mattered now.

Half a tin of tomato soup, half a tin of sardines, two chocolates filled with marzipan. It was not the best three-course meal he had ever eaten.

He went to the phone. He would ring Helen, go straight round, fuck her most tremendously.

He dialled her number, then put the phone down hurriedly.

He decided to make a list of everything he had to do tomorrow. That calmed him. That brought a bit of instant order into his life.

He sat at the mahogany table in the small dining room with the burgundy walls which were just a little darker than the Brouilly, and there, where they had hosted so many little dinner parties over the years, he began his list.

Vicar. (Never met him. Will he be cross because I never ever went to church?)

Funeral Director. (The Hutchinsons used Ferris’s Funeral Services.)

The Hutchinsons. (Were Ferris’s Funeral Services any good?)

Marcia. (Tell her the bad news. Cut her off if she offers help i.e. her body.)

Vernon and Ursula Norris. Tom and Jen…

Oh, sod it. Do it tomorrow.

He dropped the list into the waste bin.

He switched the television on, flicked though the channels, saw a pathologist cutting out the left eye of a middle-aged man and dropping it into a bottle, a panellist in a panic as he thought of the ridicule he was going to get from his workmates after he’d failed to name the capital of Hungary, a C-list fashion designer eating leeches in a mangrove swamp, an audience roaring as an overpaid chat show host held out a box of chocolates to a pretty actress and said, ‘Can I give you one?’, a pathologist cutting up a pretty girl, a celebrity chef cutting up a bulb of fennel, blood pouring from the stomach of a woman in a crypt, an ugly twenty-two-stone man with a horrendous paunch throwing a dart at a board, a lion eating a cheetah, a pathologist cutting up a gay young man, a manly Rock Hudson trying to seduce a virginal Doris Day, a pathologist cutting up a very obese man, a celebrity chef cutting up a loin of pork, and two sloths copulating very … well … slothfully.

He switched off, poured himself another glass of Brouilly, went to the waste bin, rescued his list, went back to the dining room, stretched the list out on the kitchen table, trying to iron it with his hands, added one more name, Mike … Oh God, should he invite Mike, how would he behave? … He began to think about Mike, once his best friend, now a wreck. Memories of happier times with Mike. Lots of drinking. He took a couple more sips of the Brouilly. His head dropped.

He woke suddenly, to find himself face down on a crumpled piece of paper covered in traces of tomato soup and sardine oil. He had no idea where he was. At first he felt that Deborah’s death was part of a dream. Then he was wide awake and standing up and knocking his red wine all over the carpet.

‘Oh, shit,’ he shouted to nobody.

What did you put on red wine? White wine? Salt? Lavatory paper? He tore off some toilet rolls and stamped around on them, watching them go red. Then he remembered that Deborah had some stuff that worked wonders. He rummaged around under the sink, found the stuff, stood up, bashed his head on the edge of the cupboard door, swore violently to the empty room, and worked away on the stain, with moderate success.

Max. He was supposed to be ringing Max.

He felt as though he had been asleep for several hours, but it was only twenty to twelve. He dialled his son’s mobile number very carefully, feeling dismayingly drunk.

‘Hi, Dad. How are you?’

He’d never get used to phones that showed you who was ringing. He didn’t like them. It cut into the preliminaries, the careful approach to difficult subjects. He was thrown by Max’s cheeriness. How could he destroy that carefree youthful happiness? He felt about a hundred and five.

‘I’m fine, Max. Bit drunk …’ get that in before Max did, ‘… but fine.’

‘Great to hear from you, Dad.’