The Post-Birthday World

Brow furrowed, Irina scurried back to their building, to find the girl from the ground-floor flat sitting on a lower stair with her head in her hands. Irina had never learned her name, but wasn’t so devoted to the chilly etiquette of urban life herself, nor grown so callous in her recent self-absorption, that she would angle her way blithely around a crumpled fellow tenant sobbing her heart out.

Irina put a hand, just, on the girl’s shoulder. “Are you okay? Do you need any help? What’s wrong?”

Again, with London protocol so drastically revised that Westminster could as well have issued a decree, the girl didn’t merely snuffle that she’d be fine, thanks, but began to gush. “My boyfriend doesn’t understand! He’s furious with me! He says I didn’t even cry like this when his mother died. But I just can’t believe it! I’m gutted! It’s so sad!”

Irina shyly unfolded the paper in her hand, which she had halved not so much for ease of carrying as out of respect. “I’m sorry, I just got up, and the papers only …”

Overcome, the girl could now only nod. “B-both. Both of them.”

This turn of the wheel wasn’t quite in the same league as the collapse of the Soviet Union, but in Britain it came close.

“This is absolutely incredible.” Closing the door, she hugged the headline to herself. “Diana!”

“What’s that cow up to now?” said Lawrence. She knew he would light into one of his cruel imitations. “Oh,” he said in falsetto, lowering his head and batting his eyelashes, “I’d love to help the underprivileged, but I just ate five jars of marshmallow fluff, and have to go throw up! While I’m stuffing my whole hand down my throat, could you tell those nice people that was not cellulite in my thighs? I’d just been sitting on a chenille bedspread! Afterwards, can I tell that story about Charles saying, ‘Whatever love is’? Because with so many dresses I only wear once, it’s important to keep the commoners feeling sorry for me!”

“Are you quite finished?”

“Just getting started!”

“Because she’s dead,” Irina announced.

“Get out.”

“She and Dodi Fayed were being chased by photographers and crashed in a tunnel in Paris.” Irina delivered the news with spiteful triumph. Not often did she see Lawrence speechless (all he could manage was, “Wow. That’s weird”), and watching him flounder was satisfying. “So maybe the next time you start to say something vicious about someone you hardly know, you should stop to think that any day you could find out they’re dead, and consider how you’d feel.”

Over the national keening of the next few weeks, Irina took the jarring death of the “people’s princess” personally. In narrative terms, Diana’s story had lurched from genre to genre. Like Irina’s once-charmed romance with Lawrence Trainer, a fairy tale had soured to soap opera, and then hurtled towards tragedy.

“You said you had something you had to talk to me about, and this had better not be just another girly mope about Princess Di.” The merlot banged on the table, next to Irina’s zinfandel. “For a schlep all the way out to the East End, I expect nothing short of scandal.”

For some people keeping secrets was invigorating, but for Irina they were combustible; by September she was about to explode. Absent a therapist, the next best thing was plain-speaking Betsy Philpot. They’d arranged to meet at Best of India, a hole-in-the-wall on Roman Road. Betsy and Leo lived in Ealing, well west, and Betsy had resisted travelling across the whole of London with five Indian restaurants in her own neighbourhood. But Irina insisted that Best of India served distinctive dishes at reasonable prices; it lacked a liquor licence, but didn’t charge a corking fee. An executive with Universal—recently acquired by Seagram’s—Leo had just accepted a salary cut to stay on board. Glad to save a few quid on the wine, Betsy had relented. Besides, like most excellent company, Betsy was a gossip, and would have met Irina in Siberia if she had “something to talk about.”

With the conventional obsequiousness of Indian waiters (a thin cover for contempt), the Asian uncorked the zin, then presented their poppadoms and condiment tray with a flourish. Irina made a mental note to avoid the raw-onion relish.

“Well, out with it,” said Betsy. “Life’s short, and tonight’s shorter.”

Irina hesitated. Obviously, it was dangerous to spill the beans to anyone who was friends with Lawrence as well. But to release the story into the world was also to relinquish sole proprietorship. When you let other people in on your business, you allowed them to have cavalier opinions about it; you might as well hand guests your prized original Monet miniature for a coffee coaster. Too, the moment she opened her mouth, her transgressions would become a matter of public record. Any prospective retreat would leave a slime trail.

“You’re not going to approve,” said Irina.

“I’m your judge and jury?”

“You can be moralistic.” Though Betsy hadn’t been Irina’s editor for years, a shadow of hierarchy remained. Betsy wouldn’t live in any fear of Irina’s opinion of her.

“Excuse me, I didn’t realize this was going to be a critique of my character.”

“It isn’t.” Irina took a slug of wine. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t start defending myself against all the mean things you’re going to say when you haven’t said them yet.”

“My guess is that you’re the one who’s been saying mean things, about yourself.”

“You’re right there—vile things.” Another slug. “Anyway, back in July, something—happened to me.”

“You know how when you’re in the gym, and you have to do your sit-ups, and you go for water and retie your shoes? Putting it off never makes it any easier.”

Crumbling her poppadom, Irina couldn’t look Betsy in the eye. “I met someone. Or we’d known each other for years, but only met-met this one night.” No matter how she told it, the tale sounded cheap. “I seem to have fallen in love with him.”

“I thought you were in love,” said Betsy sternly. Her own congenial marriage had the dynamic of a corporate partnership, and Betsy had more than once expressed a wistful envy of Irina’s conspicuously warmer tie.

“I did, too,” said Irina dejectedly. “And now, on a dime, I feel nothing for Lawrence, or nothing but pity. I feel like a monster.”

“—Since when do you smoke?” Irina’s British friends would have cadged one, but Betsy was a fellow Yank, and rather than slip out the packet of Gauloises, Irina might as well have tabled a Baggie of white powder, a used syringe, and a spoon.

“It’s only occasional.” Irina tried to direct the smoke away from Betsy’s face, but the circulation system blew it back again. “Don’t tell Lawrence. He’d have a cow.”

“I bet he knows.”

“I do the whole breath-mint thing, but yeah, probably.”

“Oh, he definitely knows about the ciggies. But you have bigger problems to fry. I meant I bet he knows you’re having an affair.”

Irina looked up sharply. “I’m not.”

Betsy examined her sceptically. “This is a platonic infatuation? You go to museums, and work yourself into ecstasies over a painting?”

“I’ve never been sure what ‘platonic’ means exactly. We, ah—it’s physical, all right. But we haven’t, ah, sealed the deal. I thought that was important.” She was not at all sure it was important. Restraint has an eroticism of its own, and the agony of forgoing sexual closure had for weeks achieved a sweetness that bordered on rapture. If this was loyalty, what in God’s name was betrayal?

“Has the nooky side of things been so bad, with Lawrence? Fallen off?”

“Bad? It’s never been bad with Lawrence. We probably, or we used to until recently, have sex three or four times a week. But it’s strangely impersonal.”

“Three or four times a week, and you’re complaining? Leo and I fuck about as often as we rotate our mattress.”

“I never know what’s going on in his head.”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

“I’m too afraid that he’ll ask me what’s going on in mine.”

“Which is?”

The waiter arrived, and Irina coloured. The Asian surely assumed that loose Western floozies routinely conducted just this sort of seedy discussion over poppadoms.

“I think about someone else,” she mumbled once he’d taken their orders. “It started out as a last resort, and now it’s an entrenched bad habit. If I don’t summon a certain other party in my head, I can’t—finish the job.”

“This other party. What does he do for a living?”

“If I tell you, then you’ll know who it is.”

“You’re planning on getting through a lamb korma, a chicken vindaloo, and a side order of spinach and chickpeas without telling me the guy’s name?”